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Alyssa Grossman

Dr Alyssa Grossman
PhD

Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media (Culture, Space & Memory)
Communication and Media

About

As a social and visual anthropologist, my work spans the arenas of cultural memory, critical heritage, material and visual culture, ethnographic filmmaking, and the intersections between anthropology and contemporary art. My fieldwork primarily has been in Romania, investigating sites and practices of remembrance work in post-communist Bucharest, with a focus on everyday objects, landscapes, images and discourses of memorialisation. I have also conducted fieldwork in ethnographic museums and archives, and I have done research on amateur film practices and family archives. My ethnographic films include Into the Field (2005), In the Light of Memory (2010), and Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues (2011, co-directed with Selena Kimball). Drawn to cross-disciplinary and exploratory methodologies, I co-founded the collective General Assn. with visual artist Selena Kimball. Our long-term art/anthropology collaborations and exchanges include exhibitions, film and video installations, collaborative fieldwork, and written texts.

I have an MA in Visual Anthropology from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (2005), and a PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media from the University of Manchester (2010). After completing post-doctoral research at the University of Gothenburg’s Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (2016), I held a post-doc in Artistic Research at the University of Gothenburg’s Valand Academy (now HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design), where I maintain an affiliation as Docent/Associate Professor in Fine Art. I joined the University of Liverpool in 2019 as a Lecturer in Communication and Media. I am part of the Culture, Space and Memory research group, and a founding member of the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life. Since 2022, I have been co-editor of the Journal of Anthropological Films.