Meet Our Team

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Kris Belden-Adams is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Mississippi and was the Dorothy Kayser Hohenberg Research Chair of Excellence in Art History at the University of Memphis (2023-2024). She is the Chief Editor of Art Inquiries journal, and the author of monographs Photography, Temporality, Modernity: Time Warped (2019), and Photography, Eugenics, ‘Aristogenics’: Picturing Privilege (2020). In addition, she is an editor and contributor to the volumes Photography and Failure: One Medium’s Incessant Entanglement with Mishaps, Flops, and Disappointments (2017), and Diverse Histories in Photographic Albums: ‘These Are Our Stories’ (2022). 

With Dr. Karen Barber, Belden-Adams is a Content Co-Editor for Smarthistory’s/Khan Academy’s coverage on the history of photography, and is dedicated to expanding coverage of women photographers. Her research and other projects help to give rise to new voices, illuminate the work of overlooked women photographers, and help enrich our histories.

Dr. Rose Teanby is an independent photographic historian specialising in early British women photographers. She is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Rose gained her PhD at the Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, researching early British women photographers 1839-1861. Having previously gained a Diploma in Photography in 1983, one of her portraits was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2015. 

Rose has presented her research at conferences including Anna Atkins Symposium, New York Public Library 2018), Women, Work and Commerce in the Creative Industries: Britain, 1750-1950 (Westminster University, 2019), Royal Photographic Society (International Women's Day, 2022), A New Power (Bodleian Library, Oxford 2023), and Women and Worlds of Learning (Oxford University, 2024). Rose contributed two essays to the 2022 publication A World History of Women Photographers and online articles for the Journal of Victorian Culture, Photo Oxford Festival, The Royal Society, V&A, National Portrait Gallery and Linnean Society. She has contributed to the PhotoHistorian and recently published research in Photography and Culture.

Dr Michael Pritchard has a practical knowledge of studio and location photography, b/w darkroom processing and printing, and digital photography. He joined Christie’s, the fine art auction house, as a photography specialist in 1986 and grew auctions of cameras and photographic equipment and associated material, setting many world auction records. He was also an auctioneer, and became a Christie’s Director and International Business Director for collectibles across the company. In 2007 he became a consultant for Christie’s working on a new cataloguing and property control system.

He also undertook a PhD in history of photography between 2007 and 2010. His thesis examined photographic manufacturing and retailing from 1839-1914. He has taught history of photography at MA level at De Montfort University and catalogued and organised the Kodak Historical Collection at the British Library for public access.

Michael was recruited to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 2011 as Chief Executive, becoming Director of Programmes from 2018-2023. During his tenure he brought a renewed public profile for the RPS and oversaw an expansion in its public activities, not least growing its membership to the largest in its history. The RPS moved in 2019 to a new building with public spaces that introduced an enhanced public exhibition, education and events programmes. During the pandemic the public programmes pivoted to online delivery, and subsequently to a hybrid model, to reach new audiences.

Dr. Karen Barber is a curator and art historian specializing in the history and theory of photography and Modern art. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of Cade Art Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College. Dr. Barber is also a contributing co-editor for twentieth-century photography at Smarthistory/Khan Academy, and works to expand its coverage of women photographers. Her research explores interwar photography, photobooks, photographic exhibitions, and photography as it relates to Native America within the context of, and as a means of upsetting, traditional settler colonialist narratives. She has also worked in significant photography collections in numerous American art museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. 

Kimberly Donnelly is a Professor of Art History at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan. She earned an ABD and Masters of Philosophy at The Grad Center of the City University of New York, focusing on German Dada as well as Neue Sachlichkeit. Currently teaching the Histories of Modern Art, Architecture, Interior Design and Photography, she is dedicated to amplifying the awareness of the future generations about the important contributions that women and people of color have made to art and art history.

Professor of Liberal Arts, Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society. Her dissertation was titled Design for Living: German and Swedish Design in the Early Twentieth Century. 

She has a Fil.Lic. in art history from Lunds University in Sweden, where she focused on contemporary art and social consciousness, specifically in the work of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon. She was brought to Sweden on a Fulbright scholarship for a project centered on Swedish Emigration to Minnesota. She also holds an MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art. 

Gasterland-Gustafsson is currently the head of costume design for Out on a Limb Dance, chairs the board at Soo Visual Art Center, and serves on the Second Shift Studio Space board. She collaborates with local artists on various projects involving both writing and making.

Damon Stanek is an art historian specializing in contemporary art and theory, photography, and cinema studies. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities including Parsons the New School for Design and CUNY City College. Stanek's writing has been published in Art in America, Afterimage, and InReview. His ongoing research, entitled Seeing the Light, discusses the emergence of projected images in museum and gallery spaces and examines the modes of circulation for artists' films and videos. He is currently in the process of editing a documentary film about the political economy of creative musicians entitled No Place Left to Play.