Dr Kelley Wilder

Professor Kelley Wilder is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice.  In her work Kelley  considers the photographic practices of nineteenth century scientists and artists like William Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Herschel, Henri Becquerel and others. New projects include work on Photographic catalogues and archives, and nineteenth and twentieth century material cultures of photographic industry.

Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC)

Click here for a full listing of Kelley Wilder's publications and outputs.

material cultures of photography

photography and science

archives, catalogues and photograpy

photography, industry and technology

• Photographic history
• Photography and industry
• Photographic research practices
• Material histories of photography
• Science and Photography
• History of Technology

D.Phil., Oxford University 2003

 

 

Advisory Board, Studies in Theory and History of Photography, University of Zurich

 

 European Society of the History of Photography 

 History of Science Society

 European Society for the History of Science

 

2020-2023      Mercator Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany. DFG project, "Astronomie-Glasarchiv: Fotografische Praktiken in der Sternwarte, 1850-1950" (The Astronomical Glass Archive: Photographic practices of the Observatory 1850-1950), PI Professor Omar Nasim, Regensburg.

2019-2022      Research Fellow of the Science Museum, London

2019-2020      Marie Curie EU Training Grant (€84,497) ‘Photomechanical Reproduction in Europe’ with Dr. Petra Trnkova, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

2017-2018      M3C Creative Economy Engagement Postdoctoral funding (£29,741) for ‘Pictures in Natural Collections’, with Damian Hughes and the Natural History Museum, London

2016-2017      HEIF Network fund 'The Meaning of Photographic Materials' (£3000)

2016-2017       British Academy Research Grant for project 'Doing Science in a Photographic Age' (£6,635)

PHRC 2021 Conference Photography and its Many Colours: Innovations, Emotions and Activism

2021    (Forthcoming, in press) Wilder, K. ‘Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge’ in Stefanie Klamm et al., Hybrid Photography (Bloomsbury Press).

2020    Wilder, K., ‘Science, Art and the Business of Color’, in Bettina Gockel (ed.) The Colors of Photography, (Berlin: de Gruyter Press), 307-325.

2019    Wilder, K. ‘The Two Cultures of Word and Image: On Materiality and the Photographic Catalog’, in Julia Bärnighausen, et al. (eds.) On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo-Archives in the Humanities and Sciences, (Open Editions, Max Plank Institute, Berlin), 263-273.

Kelley Wilder, 'Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology' Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 23, Issue 4, 28 September (2018) 503–507.

Gregg Mitman and Kelley Wilder eds. Documenting the World: Film, Photography and the Scientific Record (Chicago, 2016)

Kelley Wilder, Photography and Science (Reaktion, 2009)

• Ella Ravilious 'Photographic Collecting Practices of the National Art Library' CDA with Victoria and Albert Museum
• Erika Lederman  'Women Photographers and the South Kensington Museum' CDA with Victoria and Albert Museum
• Valentine Nyamdon 'Manufacturing a Subversive Reality: Backdrops and Photographic Manipulations in Cameroonian studio Photography'
• Rose Teanby 'Early women photographers and the influence of common law 1839-1861'
• Peter Cheese 'From Silver to Silicon'
• Francesca Strobino 'Investigating Talbot's Experiments in Photomechanical Printing'

2020-2023      Mercator Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany. DFG project, "Astronomie-Glasarchiv: Fotografische Praktiken in der Sternwarte, 1850-1950" (The Astronomical Glass Archive: Photographic practices of the Observatory 1850-1950), PI Professor Omar Nasim, Regensburg.

2019-2022      Research Fellow of the Science Museum, London

2019-2020      Marie Curie EU Training Grant (€84,497) ‘Photomechanical Reproduction in Europe’ with Petra Trnkova, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

2017-2018      M3C Creative Economy Engagement Postdoctoral funding (£29,741) for ‘Pictures in Natural Collections’, with Damian Hughes and the Natural History Museum, London

2016-2017       British Academy Research Grant for project 'Doing Science in a Photographic Age' (£6,635)

2016-2017      HEIF Network fund 'The Meaning of Photographic Materials' (£3000)