Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology: University of Manchester

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Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology: University of Manchester

We're a teaching and research hub for ethnographic documentary, photography and sound recording at the University of Manchester

For the last twenty years The Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at The University of Manchester has been widely recognised as the world’s leading centre for Visual Anthropology. Its graduates have produced more than 300 films that have been seen around the world and are regularly shown at international film festivals.

04/06/2026

Alumni Spotlight: .patel.399 (Chandni Brown, MAVA 2023) is a published author, filmmaker and founder of JUST Impact, a non-profit research organisation.

After completing the MA in Visual Anthropology, Chandni has developed projects combining creative research and impact storytelling in her work as a gender justice advocate. Her recent projects include publishing research on the Sustainable Development Goals, supporting a stage production on the challenges of human trafficking, ethnographic photography across Asia, and delivering seminars on anthropological approaches to gender justice.

She says: "I came to the Granada Centre with a career in law and policy, one built on traditional research methods but with a real risk of overlooking the people we were trying to help. The MA in Visual Anthropology taught me how to approach things differently, working creatively and collaboratively to co-produce research that is capable of wider impact"

Catch her award-winning debut documentary 'Sahan Shakti' in the showcase section of our website!

03/06/2026

Things you can do with a Zoom H5 Studio Handy Recorder:
Capture multispecies entanglements.

Part of the kit available to our MA Visual Anthropology students!

02/06/2026

New students already experimenting in this year's Short Course in Ethnographic Filmmaking!

28/05/2026

Alumni Spotlight: 👩‍🎓 Alyssa Fedele is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and anthropologist based in San Francisco.

After completing the MA in Visual Anthropology in 2006, Alyssa freelanced for National Geographic Channel before co-founding , a documentary and commercial production house. Her work has appeared on , , , , , , and . She won the 2021 National Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary for her film, .

"The MAVA provided not only a strong foundation in both theory and practice, but the rare opportunity to develop my own film within a dedicated creative environment. That experience sharpened my storytelling instincts and gave me the confidence and credentials to enter the industry with a clear voice. Those skills continue to shape my work today, both creatively and professionally"

27/05/2026

Preparing the camera kits for next week's short course in ethnographic documentary - Sony FX6, 24-105 and 45 lenses, Rycote HC-15 mic and (not pictured) Sennheiser G4 EW 500 radiomicrophone. Plus tripods and boom poles!

26/05/2026

Our film of the week is 'Kanarta' by Akimi Ota, a two-hour documentary that tells a story about rising forms of embodied knowledge practices and entangled selves in times of ecological uncertainty among the indigenous forest dwellers called Shuar in Ecuadorian Amazonia. The film explores the intimate lifeworlds of particular Shuar individuals and observes how they make sense of increasingly unassured identity and material relationship with their living environment, affected by the progressive deforestation and growing presence of modern capitalism.

Watch at the link in our bio!

Based on Akimi's doctoral fieldwork at the GCVA and supported by a Wenner Gren postdoc fellowship.

21/05/2026

2025 MAVA Alumni Amri Coburn's fundraiser screening event of their graduate film "Starfish" in Brighton raised over £1000 for gender affirming care participants of the film, a donation to a local grassroots trans book group and to contribute to Amri's next film project. Congratulations Amri!

20/05/2026

GCVA Director Rupert Cox and PhD graduate (2025) Ally Lomas on location in , for Rinait Soundscapes, which explores the traditional ecological knowledge of Sabah's Kadazandusun community through the ancient Rinait chants of elders.

In partnership with

19/05/2026

2 weeks to go! We are looking forward to welcoming students for Short Course in Ethnographic Documentary, where they will learn camera operation, sound recording and editing for film in anthropological research. More exciting updates to follow!

14/05/2026

Next Wednesday: our ethnographic documentary lecturer Jolynna Sinanan will be speaking about human engagements with the Khumbu Glacier in the Everest region, Nepal at the University of Lancashire's Research and Knowledge Exchange Festival

Address

Arthur Lewis Building, University Of Manchester, Oxford Road
Manchester
M139PL

Website

https://granadacentre.co.uk/links/

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