Professor Melissa Miles

Melissa Miles is based in the Art History and Theory program.
Her research explores the interdisciplinary qualities of photography and its movement across the domains of art, law, politics and history. The role of photographs in cross-cultural photographic relations is another key area of research interest. In partnership with Robin Gerster, she has completed a major study supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant on photography in the Australia-Japan relationship from the 1890s to the present. Melissa’s Future Fellowship project examined the important role of photographs in the public sphere, and their special significance in contexts of transitional justice.
Melissa’s research is published in a wide range of journals, including Journal of Visual Culture, Law Culture and the Humanities, Japanese Studies andHistory of Photography amongst many others, and she is a regular contributor to the arts press. Her books include Photography, Truth and Reconciliation (Bloomsbury), Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship (with Robin Gerster, ANU Press), The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography (McGill Queen’s UP and Power Publications), The Culture of Photography in Public Space (co-edited with Daniel Palmer and Anne Marsh, Intellect and the University of Chicago Press), and The Burning Mirror: Photography in an Ambivalent Light (ASP).
Additional research
Melissa Miles, Photography, Truth and Reconciliation
ISBN 9781474296069
London: Bloomsbury
Melissa Miles and Robin Gerster, Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship
ISBN 9781760462543
Canberra: ANU Press
Melissa Miles, The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography
ISBN 9780773545502
Sydney: Power Publications and Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press
Anne Marsh, Melissa Miles and Daniel Palmer (eds.), The Culture of Photography in Public Space
ISBN 9781783204595
London and Chicago: Intellect and the University of Chicago Press
Melissa Miles, The Burning Mirror: Photography in an Ambivalent Light
ISBN 9781740971966
Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing