Dr. Kelly Hussey-Smith
Details
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Department: School of Art
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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kelly.hussey-smith@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID:
0000-0002-6319-8865
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Dr Kelly Hussey-Smith is a creative researcher specialising in photography as a social practice, the politics of representation, and art education. She is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at RMIT's School of Art and an active researcher and advisor for the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation Research Group (CAST).
With a background in documentary photography theory and practice, Kelly's research intersects socially engaged art, visual culture, pedagogy, and political theory. She is particularly interested in art's civil potential and its role in producing counter-histories. Kelly frequently collaborates across disciplines to connect university research with local issues through creative practice. Her current research focuses on visual politics, youth history-making, and collective art practices.
Kelly has received multiple teaching awards, including an Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) Teaching Award for The Photo Lab and the Doing Visual Politics education project and network (with Alan Hill), as well as an RMIT Award for Socially Engaged Curriculum for The Nurses and Midwives Art Exchange.
In 2018, Kelly developed 'The Photo Lab', a community-oriented education project based in Collingwood. Her curriculum innovation centres collaboration and ethics by critically addressing "engagement" and foregrounding the relational and ethical aspects of collaborative work.
Since 2016, she has collaborated with Dr Alan Hill on Doing Visual Politics, a cross-institutional project exploring creative practice as civil action, co-created with photo.circle (Nepal) and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute (Bangladesh).
Kelly has published numerous articles and book chapters in refereed and non-refereed publications and exhibited her photography nationally and internationally. Her recent writing focuses on collaboration and ethics in arts-based education and documentary as a form of civil action. Her work has been exhibited at major institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane Powerhouse, and Art Gallery of Ballarat, as well as international photography festivals such as Foto Freo, Chobi Mela, and the Bandung Photography Triennale.
Research fields
- 360604 Photography, video and lens-based practice
- 3606 Visual arts
- 390105 Environmental education curriculum and pedagogy
- 390303 Higher education
- 3601 Art history, theory and criticism
Supervisor projects
- Thành Phẩm: Approaches to photographic practice as strategies to reframe and reclaim contemporary Vietnamese narratives of the American War in Vietnam
- 17 Jan 2025
- Visualisations and materialisations of the tree in Indigenous art
- 10 Oct 2024
- You’ll Know It When You Feel It: Examining How Co-Created Archives Can Resist Bureaucratic Representations of Women Whose Lives Intersect with the Prison Industrial Complex
- 22 Apr 2024
- Dark Orange Sinensis: Anti-Ethnographic Approaches to Documentary Photography
- 10 Jan 2024
- An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of Birrarung
- 14 Dec 2023
- Turning into bad women: Understanding the perception about Bangladeshi Female Migrant workers in the community
- 2 Mar 2023
- Through A Glass Darkly: Documentary Photography and the Post-Truth Episteme
- 8 Mar 2022
- A Thousand Different Adventures
- 15 Dec 2020
- Safe Space as Praxis: Creating (Affective) Conditions for World-Building, Care and Futures for Young People in the Creative Arts
- 3 Aug 2019
- Bodies Beyond the Skin: Queer and Camp Inquiries of Australian Landscape Photography
- 17 Aug 2018
Teaching interests
Dr Hussey-Smith teaches studio and theory courses with a focus on praxis. She is interested in how documentary and other social practices contribute to civil dialogue and partnerships. She has spent several years developing pedagogical approaches for community-oriented art education projects that centre community knowledge/s and causes.
She teaches photography theory and practice, research methods and contexts (Honours), critical documentary studies, socially engaged art, and partnered projects.
Kelly has designed, written and delivered several undergraduate and honours courses and specialisations, including:
Picturing Power
Expanded Documentary
Social Documentary
The Photo Lab: Collingwood Studio
Research in Creative Practice (Honours Theory Course)
Honours writing workshops
Forms for Encounter and Exchange (with Associate Professor Marnie Badham)
Doing Visual Politics: Creative Practice as Civil Action (with Dr Alan Hill)
The Nurses and Midwives Art Exchange (with Dr Ruth De Souza, Dr Fleur Summers, Dr Mark Edgoose and Professor Grace McQuilten)
Research interests
Research Interests:
Dr Kelly Hussey-Smith is a creative researcher focused on photography as a social practice, the politics of representation, and art education.
With a background in documentary photography theory and practice, Kelly's research aligns with socially engaged art, visual culture, education, and decolonial theory. She is particularly interested in art and photography's civil potential and their connection to the production of counter-histories.
HDR Supervision:
Dr Hussey-Smith supervises several creative practice PhD and Master's candidates in the School of Art, whose research spans carcerality, collaboration and co-creation in contemporary art, artist-led pedagogies and collectives, photography's role in colonial expansion, and photography and counter-histories.
Artist Residencies & Gatherings:
2025: Photo Kathmandu Assembly
2025: Outside the Classroom: Collective art practice in Australia and Indonesia with Dr Vicki Couzens, Dr Torika Bolatagici, Associate Professor Marnie Badham, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective and Bakudapan.
2024: Doing Visual Politics; Creative Practice as Civil Action, Kathmandu, Nepal. November 7-27, 2025
2024: Activating Truth - Garambi Baan/ Laughing Waters Artist Residency: December 5 - 11 convened and organised by Dr Amy Spiers.
2023: Forms for Encounter & Exchange, Working on Unceded Lands, Group Artist Residency and Artist in Residence Program at Bundanon, November.
Community and Industry Engagement:
Dr Hussey-Smith regularly works with community-led initiatives, advocacy organisations, and industry partners on interdisciplinary research and education projects.
