Michaela Clark

Overview

I am a second-year PhD student funded by the University of Manchester's Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health President's Doctoral Scholar (PDS) Award and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.

My doctoral research focuses on an orphaned collection of 20th century clinical photographs produced in Cape Town, South Africa. By applying a practice-based method to archive this disused photographic material, I seek to both organise and study the history of medicine in this city through visual and material means.

Teaching

I have worked as a part-time lecturer and blended teacing and learning coordinator in the Visual Art Department at Stellenbosch University. I also have experience presenting guest lectures at private art and design colleges in the Cape Town area, including the Cape Town Creative Academy (CTCA) and the Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography. At present I tutor Communication Science students online for the University of South Africa (UNISA) as well as supervise undergraduate students in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University and the CTCA.

2015-2019: Part-time lecturer in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University

Photography Theory (VS 778)
Curatorial Discourse (VS 378)
Post-colonial Theory (VS 378)
Semiotics and Propaganda (VS 278)
Introduction to Photography (VS178)

2017-2019: E-Tutor in Communication Science at the University of South Afria (UNISA)

Introduction to Communication (COM1501)
Media Studies (COM3703)

2017: Guest Lecture in Contextual Studies at the Cape Town Creative Academy (CTCA)

Power/Knowledge and Photography

2015-2016: Guest Lecture in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography

Julia Kristeva and the Abject
The Idealised Body

2012-2014: Tutor in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University

Romanticism (VS178)
Film Theory (VS178)
Outsider Art (VS178)
Photography (VS178)
Semiotics Propaganda (VS278)
Queery Theory (VS378)

Supervision information

Stellenbosch University: Visual Studies Honours (VS778)

Research Article (10 000 - 12 000 words)

2019: Gizellede Gotz. The Ethos of Hunting Photography Discovered Through the Dead Animal Body
2019: Megan Wallace. The Violent Lens: Relationss of Gender,, Power, and the GAze within Contemporary Medical Rape Photography
2018: Bianca Lee Beck. Difficult Representations: When Documentary Photography Meets Advertising in South Africa

Stellenbosch University: Theory of Art and Design (ToA 478)

Research Article (10 000 - 12 000 words)

2018: Keegan Nesbitt. Our Social Network: Progress, Potential, or Plague?
2018: Amy Pike. Expanding Knowledge using Medical Science and Fine Art
2018: Carmyn von Mollendorff. (Re)production: An artistic exploration of contraception as a gendered experience
2017: Darren Booysen. Examination of the Fear and Tension produced in visual cycling safety campaigns
2017: Grace Elizabeth Croucher. ENIGMA TO STIGMA: HYSTERICAL WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF MENTAL HEALTH
2017: Dayna-Gay Tate. DISLOCATED: A Comparative Analysis of How the Destabilization of ‘Home’ Through Diasporic Migration is Visually Represented in Artistic Practice
2017: Lila Huyzers. NEW CENTURY, SAME SH*T: A Comparison between anti-feminist media in the early twentieth and twenty-first century
2017: Megan Kruger. Spatial Tension: A critical comparison between gallery spaces, exhibited artworks and the emotions they induce in the viewer

Cape Town Creative Academy: Contextual Studies Research Project (RP300)

Research Project (5 000 - 6 500 words)

2019: Cathé Pienaar. Bricks and Palimpsests: A Layered Deconstructive and Semiotic Analysis of Cape Town’s Decommissioned Industrial Structures
2019: Hesté Coetzee. White and Abject: How female South African artists grapple with whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa
2019: Julia Schimautz. The Curator as Creator: A discourse analysis of the curatorial work of Gabi Ngcobo's Berlin Biennale
2019: Magdalena Fuez. Social Media and Self-Image: analyzing contemporary female gender stereotypes on Instagram in 2019
2019: Mary Anderson. Representation of Trauma: The semiotics of domestic violence and in the work of Olivia Keck

Activities and esteem

Conferences, Symposia, and Workshops

Curating the Clinical: 20th Century Photographs and 21st Century Methods in the Medical Archive. Science and Photography Symposium. St Andrews Photograpy Festival, University of St Andrews Library Special Collections, St Andrews, Scotland. 23 October 2019.

Designing the Clinic: Racialised Architecture and the Old Groote Schuur Hospital. Health,, Healthcare and Urban Spaces: Perrspectives from the Law and Medical Humanities. The Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. 20-21 August 2019.

Designing the Clinic: Racialised Architecture and Visualising Technologis at the Old Groote Schuur Hospital. Designing Apartheid: A Workshop onformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine. The Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. 31 May 2019.

Seeing Then, Now: A Close Encounter with Clinical Photographs. SSHM (Society for the Social History of Medicine) Conference 2018: Conformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine. The Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences of Health, Medicine and Technology,University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK. 11-13 July 2018.

Patients, Power, and Representation: Clinical Photographs in Focus. SAVAH (South African Visual Art Historians) Conference 2018: Troubling Legacies. Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa. 4-6 July 2018.

Seeing Subjectivity: An Empathic Encounter with Clinical Photographs. SAHMS (Southern Association for the History of Medicine) Nineteenth Annual Meeting. Coastal Carolina University, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA. 16-18 March 2017.

Imagining Deviance: Syphilis and the Visualisation of the Unhealthy Other. JASMed (Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine) 2014. Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 3-4 October 2014.

Prizes and awards

President's Doctoral Scholarship Award, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester (2019-2022)

Oppenheimer Memorial Trust International Doctoral Scholarship (2019)

Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) Travel Bursary (2018)

Fund for Innovation and Research into Learning and Teaching (FIRLT) for blended course redesign (2018-2019)

National Research Foundation (NRF) Innovation Travel Grant (2014)

National Research Foundation (NRF) Innovation Masters Scholarship (2014-2017)

University of Stellenbosch Merit Bursary (2014-2017)

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):