Visual Anthropology MA
Year of entry: 2025
Course length: 13 months Full-Time
About the course
The MA in Visual Anthropology course is designed to meet the needs of different levels of interest and experience in anthropology and audio-visual practice, whether you have substantial or little to no background in formal anthropology, film production, visual methods and photography.
Established in 1987, the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA) is widely recognised as the world's leading centre for visual anthropology. Our graduates have produced more than 500 ethnographic films seen globally and at international film festivals. The Centre is now at the forefront of the emergent dialogue between art and anthropology, including sensory ethnography and sound, experimental and practice-based methods, photographic and digital media, and museum and gallery installations.
The MA in Visual Anthropology provides a combination of the theoretical application of anthropology with practical training in filmmaking, editing, visual methods, photography, sensory ethnography and sound.
You will have access to professional-standard filmmaking and sound recording equipment, and one-to-one technical support from a team of AV technicians.
You will also have access to the professional-standard GCVA edit suite lab to complete assessments. Technical support and maintenance for the edit suites are also provided for by a faculty team of technicians and one dedicated technician who delivers personalised advice.
Our GVCA lab includes a screening room equipped with a 5.1 Surround Sound Audio system, which is perfect for showcasing your work to other students and enhancing your collaborative creativity. With over 3500 films in the GVCA’s library, you could even host your own immersive film screening events.
The GCVA hosts a regular series of guest speakers including filmmakers, photographers, visual and sound artists and cultural producers who also provide an insight into the creative fields they work within.
By the completion of the course, you'll produce a portfolio of multimedia work, comprising a minimum of five short films, photographic essays and soundscape recordings, that together can be assembled to represent themselves for potential future commissions and employment.
Compulsory Units
- MAVA Dissertation
- Elemental Media: Documentary and Sensory Practice
- Ethnographic Documentary
- Beyond Observational Cinema
Core Units
- Anthropology of Vision, Senses and Memory
- Screening Culture
- Images, Texts, Fieldwork
Optional Units
- Key Approaches in Social Anthropology
These are examples of units offered and are subject to change.
Where will your degree take you?
The MA in Visual Anthropology allows you to develop a variety of highly transferrable skills, including analytical, research, problem-solving and communication skills, which are in high demand for a wide variety of different roles.
Our graduates have also produced TV series, documentaries and films, some have been seen on the BBC, Netflix and the UK's Channel 4, and some have won awards. Other graduates have pursued successful careers as academics, filmmakers, photographers, artists, educators, and journalists as well as in non-governmental and development sectors.
Dr Rupert Cox
GVCA Director
My regional specialism is Japan: I conducted fieldwork in the Kansai area, Kyushu, Tokyo and Okinawa. Some of my research interests include Zen art, art practice as ethnographic research, visual and sensory studies, the political ecology of military systems, soundscape studies and sound art practice.
Dr Jolynna Sinanan
Programme Director for MA Visual Anthropology
I am a digital and visual anthropologist, with thematic areas in intergenerational mobilities, work and gender. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Trinidad, Nepal, Australia and Cambodia and my current research focuses on the Everest tourism industry and includes a photographic study of development, environmental and social change.
Dr Andrew Irving
Professor of Anthropology My regional specialisations are Kampala, Uganda and New York, USA. I do research on experiences of illness, death and dying (especially from HIV/AIDS), in relation to the aesthetic appreciation of time, existence, and otherness; I am also interested in phenomenology, art, performance and creativity, time, comparisons of personhood, religious change, gender and urban experiences.
Dr Angela Torresan
Lecturer in Visual Anthropology
Having worked with indigenous peoples in Brazil, Brazilian immigrants in London and Lisbon, and slum gentrification, my current research focusses on processes of securitisation and police violence in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. My main ethnographic and theoretical interest lies on processes of emergence, maintenance, and revitalisation of identities in situations of physical and cognitive movement, and cultural change.
Dr Chris Wright
Senior Lecturer in Visual Anthropology
I am a visual anthropologist and an artist who is interested in creatively bringing those two fields together. I have done research in the Himalayas, the south Pacific, and with First Nations in the US around issues of media use and visual sovereignty, senses of place, and the potential for visual anthropology to address ecological concerns. I have published widely on anthropology and contemporary art and focus on encouraging anthropologists to explore a really wide range of experimental and collaborative practices.
Dr Lorenzo Ferrarini
Lecturer in Visual Anthropology
My research interests include hunting, perception, the senses, visual anthropology, sound, phenomenology and embodiment. I worked on donso hunters in Burkina Faso, West Africa, looking at their relationship with a changing environment and embodied knowledge. I make documentary films, photography and sound recordings.
Chandni Brown
Visual Anthropology MA
"There is so much to gain from this course. Before I started I had never even picked up a film camera, now my final film has gone on to win several awards. It's opened my eyes to the different ways research can be done."
Jose Luis Cote
Visual Anthropology MA
“I studied alongside an international community of lawyers, biologists, musicians and visual artists like myself and became part of a community of peers and tutors that were genuinely interested in each other, and empathetic, offering support and critical views to each other in respectful and sensitive ways. I had access to high quality professional equipment, an editing suit room and a projection room. The programme encouraged us to develop projects collaboratively and learning to assume different roles, negotiating and learning how to overcome obstacles as an individual and as a team. As an alumni I am still able to request access to these facilities and equipment.“
Shiro Hasegawa
Visual Anthropology MA
“The MAVA programme gave me the perspective to re-examine what I had seen, heard, and experienced through the lens of social anthropology. It encouraged me to question the very foundations of my own values and worldview. Beyond the technical aspects of filmmaking and sound recording, MAVA taught me how to work collaboratively with participants and explore ways to situate our creative process within anthropological significance. Through this, I learned that reconsidering my values while creating something together with others is a skill that contributes to living more meaningfully with people. Above all, what I value the most from the programme is the time spent with world-class professors and fellow students from across the globe. I am now working as a director at NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, drawing on all that I learned at MAVA.“
Gillian Cuba
Visual Anthropology MA
“When I took my first anthropology course in college, I admired the discipline’s ability to make me think conceptually. When I took my first visual anthropology course at The University of Manchester, my inspiration grew as I experienced the satisfaction that comes with visualizing human themes through a camera. I learned the sense of personal accomplishment and communal benefit from articulating the unarticulated. I am still applying these lessons today as a cinematographer for Mission Margraten Plus, a non-profit that takes American World War II veterans to the Netherlands to participate in commemorative ceremonies.“
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