Professor Daniel Palmer
Details
-
College: School of Art
-
Department: School of Art
-
Campus: City Campus Australia
-
daniel.palmer@rmit.edu.au
-
ORCID: 0000-0002-7775-8990
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Daniel Palmer's research and professional practice focuses on contemporary art and cultural theory, with a particular emphasis on photography and digital media. Between 2018 and 2023 he was Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Art at RMIT. Prior to joining RMIT in 2018, Palmer was Associate Dean of Graduate Research and Associate Professor in the Art History & Theory Program at Monash Art, Design & Architecture. He also has a long association with the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, first as a curator and later on the board of management.
Palmer's book publications include Dystopian and Utopian Impulses in Art Making: The World We Want, edited with Grace McQuilten (Intellect, 2023), Installation View: Photography exhibitions in Australia 1848–2020 (Perimeter Editions 2021) with Martyn Jolly; Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing (Bloomsbury 2017); Digital Light (Open Humanities Press, 2015), edited with Sean Cubitt and Nathaniel Tkacz; The Culture of Photography in Public Space (Intellect 2015), edited with Anne Marsh and Melissa Miles; Twelve Australian Photo Artists (Piper Press, 2009), co-authored with Blair French; and Photogenic (Centre for Contemporary Photography, 2005). His scholarly writings on photography and contemporary art have appeared in journals such as Photographies, Philosophy of Photography, Angelaki, Reading Room and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Palmer has also published over sixty catalogue essays and fifty art reviews since 1997, in art magazines including Art and Australia, Photofile and Frieze.
Palmer has been the recipient of various awards and grants, and has been Chief Investigator on multiple ARC projects, including the ARC Discovery Project 'Genealogies of Digital Light' (2008–11) with Sean Cubitt and Les Walkling; an ARC Linkage Project 'Photography as a Crime' (2009–2012) with Anne Marsh, Melissa Miles, Mark Davison and the Centre for Contemporary Photography; the ARC Discovery Project 'Curating Photography in the Age of Photosharing'; (2015–2017) with Martyn Jolly; and the ARC Discovery Project ‘Digital Photography: Mediation, Memory and Visual Communication’ (2020–24) with Scott McQuire, Nikos Papastergiadis, Sean Cubitt and Celia Lury.
Supervisor projects
- A Cuppa and a Yarn: Reclaiming Known Materialism and Collaboration as Sites of Resistance and Connection in Photo-Media
- 25 Mar 2024
- Looking at you looking at me
- 1 Mar 2023
- Reimagining War and a New Landscape of Conflict
- 20 Oct 2022
- Theres no going back: chaos and destruction as compositional strategies in performance and video
- 8 Jul 2022
- Picking Up The Pieces: Reconfiguring Australian Landscape Photography
- 1 May 2022
- Through A Glass Darkly: Documentary Photography and the Post-Truth Episteme
- 13 Dec 2021
- An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of the Birrarung
- 12 May 2021
- The Colony Cares for Everyone
- 24 Aug 2020
- Network Gestures Critical and Creative Responses to the Networked Body
- 20 Feb 2019
- Evoking The Invisible Lesbian Through Creative Practice
- 13 Dec 2018
- Ever Altered: Exploring the French Colonial Impact on Vietnamese Australian Diasporic Identity Through Archival Art Practice
- 8 Oct 2018
Teaching interests
As the leader of art history and theory in the School of Art, I teach across the School in both the Photography and Fine Art disciplines. Currently, I coordinate ‘Illusion and Reality’ and ‘Eco-Visionaries: Making Art on a Changing Planet'.
Throughout my academic career I have been passionately engaged in teaching and educational leadership. I started my teaching career as an ESL teacher and have always been passionate about the transformative potential of education and the importance of inclusivity and clarity in my teaching practice.
While undertaking my PhD at the University of Melbourne (1997–2003), I was a sessional tutor in cultural and media studies in the English Department and at the Australian Centre, taught visual culture in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University and art theory at the Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of Arts. In 2003, I was appointed as a part-time lecturer at the University of Melbourne to write and deliver their first ever subject on the history of photography (externally funded by Joyce Evans). I also established a ground-breaking subject on new media art for their Master of Art Curatorship degree.
In 2005, I took up a full-time position in Art Theory at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University (MADA). In that role I taught and developed multiple units including Honours Theory, Art Criticism and Curatorship, and the foundation unit Introduction to Visual Culture in Art, Design & Architecture with over 500 students. Between 2007–14, I was the Honours Coordinator of Art History and Theory, and as Acting Director of the Art History and Theory Program in 2015 I established and later co-coordinated a new Bachelor of Art History and Curating degree (2016–).
After arriving at RMIT in 2018, I was Associate Dean of Research and Innovation for 6 years from 2018 to 2023, during which time my teaching was limited to regular guest lectures. Since 2024, I have returned to my first love – the classroom.
I also have an exemplary record as a higher degree research supervisor, with more than twenty PhD completions.
