Derek Trillo
PhD Research
Working title: Re-imaging the museum: Digital photography, the visiting experience and audience engagement.
My research aims to explore how users' digital photography in museums and galleries impacts on the visiting experience, collection interpretation and public engagement. To do that, the research will address the following issues: How changes in image capture, editing, and sharing affect the motivation, subjects and aims of visitors' photography. How do the motivations, subjects and aims of visitors' photography affect their spatial and social experience of the museum. To what extent do taking, disseminating and sharing digital photographs affect the users' interpretation of museum collections onsite and online. How does visitors' photography fit into the museums' public engagement agenda and practice. I am interested in developing projects to assess the impact of image production/sharing, particularly for community groups who find language-based museum engagement challenging.
Biography
After an early, unsatisfying career in computing, I joined the University of Manchester in 1994. Initially in the Science faculty, I introduced and developed digital imaging for teaching and research purposes. In 1998 I moved to the Arts Faculty working in digital imaging/photography. I completed a part-time MA (Photography) at De Montfort University under Prof. Paul Hill OBE, graduating in 2006. I have worked part-time as a tutor for the Open College of the Arts on their BA programme since 2007. I left the University of Manchester in 2008 to start a freelance photography business and to pursue research leading to this PhD, supervised by Kostas Arvanitis.
Contact details: derek@insightimages.co.uk: derek.trillo@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk