Dr Liza Dracup: Senior Lecturer in Photography in the School of Arts and Communication and photographer. My wider research loop continues to intersect professional and academic contexts and extends to re-positioning a wide range of historical collections-based research material across photographic, artistic and science disciplines. My experimental photographic practice continues to underpin my academic research, in the successful completion of my practice-based doctorate, exploring: Photographic strategies for visualising the landscape and natural history of Northern England: the ordinary and the extraordinary (2017).

My work has been recognised through international award nominations: Aesthetica Art Prize 2026 Finalist and Aesthetica Art Prize 2025 Longlisted artist, Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2012) and Prix Pictet (2009).

​My practice-based research questions how photography, made in response to specific landscapes and natural histories, can operate within the field of landscape aesthetics and align with the wider cultural debates about the value of the ‘local’ from an environmental and personal perspective. My practice investigates strategies that capitalise on the transformational qualities of photography, which in turn present us with paradoxes that extend beyond human vision. 

My current enquiry focuses on and places emphasis on the extraordinary properties of the ordinary and reveal hidden or unseen aspects, leading to a more informed, comprehensive and enriched idea of the northern landscape and its natural history. This research trajectory continues to be enriched by on-going photographic examination and research associated and relating to of the broader cultural value of the ordinary and the local.