Welcome to the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life, where we conduct qualitative and experimental research in the arts, culture, and everyday life. We have interdisciplinary expertise on a wide range of issues including around space, time, and memory, and we engage with questions of urban experience and visual culture both locally in Liverpool and internationally. Watch this space for live and online events and opportunities relating to art and anthropology, cultural studies, everyday life research, material culture, urban media, critical and cultural theory, and much more.
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NEWS MAY 2026: Two of our team have recently been promoted! Dr Les Roberts is now Professor Les Roberts and Dr. Jordana Blejmar is now a Reader.
The Invisible Image: Photography and the Unseen
The Invisible Image: Photography and the Unseen
A single-stream 2 day International Conference hosted by the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life, School of the Arts, University of Liverpool.
18-19 June 2026
Instagram: @ccel_uliverpool
Bsky: cceluliverpool.bsky.social
Hashtag: #invisibleimageLiv
Keynote speakers: Prof. Jordan Bear (University of Toronto)
Prof. Estelle Blaschke (University of Basel)
This conference investigates theories, histories and methodologies relating to photographic images that are, for different reasons, unseen or unseeable. In the past twenty years, theorists and scholars across disciplines have raised the idea of the invisible image in various ways: discussing “operational” images intended for machine-reading rather than human viewing, and “invisual’ images that appear in aggregation and in which the visual qualities of the image are less significant than the metadata they carry; the legal and political processes that have restricted the viewing and distribution of certain types of images; the images that provide the ‘training’ for AI image production; latent photographic images that have been exposed and may never be developed, and the traces of erased, damaged and faded images. Writers concerned with archival photographs of racialized subjects appeal to senses other than the visual: to the rhythms and tactility of pictures. And for a long time now, photographers and artists have found creative ways to visualise absence, and especially, to make present subjects “disappeared” by dictatorships and through war.
SEE LINK TO CONFERENCE PROGRAMME IN MENU BAR
Additional Information:
Conference fee: £90
Unwaged/ PhD students: £45
(fee includes lunches and refreshments across both days and a drinks reception, a conference dinner will also be organised which will be charged separately for those who wish to participate)
We are unable to offer fee waivers.
Honorary Professor Ben Highmore
Honorary Professor Ben Highmore
As of September 2025, the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life at the University of Liverpool has appointed Professor Ben Highmore as Honorary Professor. He remains Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex. His affiliation began with a workshop and welcome event on the 10th September. We look forward to collaborating with Ben on future projects.
Past Events:
Weds 30 April 2025 Melissa McCarthy – “Absolutely Nebulous: Fog, Fuzzy Edges and Vagueness in Photographic Fields” University of Liverpool SotA library/online,
Weds 14 May 2025 Creative Methods Workshop: The Video Essay with Dr. Alan O’ Leary, Aarhus University, Denmark
Weds 28 May 2025 Eileen Perrier – “A Thousand Small Stories” – online only (Zoom)
Ghana - 1996 © Eileen Perrier
5-6 Sept 2024 Post-Pandemic Imaginaries Conference
This was a two day international conference, with speakers from many countries including South Korea, South Africa, the US and Portugal. The full conference programme can be found HERE.
Image: Andrii and Lia Dostliev, 'Comfort Work', work in progress.
Artist talk by Andrii Dostliev
At the occasion of the launch of the AHRC-IAA funded project "Contemporary Art and Political Change for Ukrainian Displaced Persons".
Andrii Dostliev (b. 1984) is an artist, curator, and photography researcher from Ukraine, based in Poland. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma, decolonial practices in Eastern Europe, gay history of Ukraine, and the limits of photography as a medium. His art practice works across photography, video, drawing, performance, and installation. His work (together with Lia Dostlieva) will be part of the Ukrainian Pavillion exhibition at Venice Biennale 2024.
"Contemporary Art and Political Change for Ukrainian Displaced Persons". is a collaboration between the Ukrainian Pavillion, Vid Simoniti (Philosophy Department, University of Liverpool), and Open Eye Gallery, investigating political self-expression of displaced persons through art. Event hosted in collaboration with Centre for Culture & Everyday Life.
This in-person workshop was hosted by CCEL on December 1st, 2023. It explored the role of videogame engines such as Unity and Unreal in our contemporary visual culture. Curated by Paolo Ruffino (University of Liverpool) and Valentino Catricalà (School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University), it included speakers Aleena Chia, Joseph DeLappe, Vid Simoniti, Lesley Taker, Sandra Youkhana & Luke Caspar Pearson . Full details on the University of Liverpool website at the link above.
Traces of Memory
This was a collaborative research project led by PhD student Emily Beswick, which explored how family photos can reveal the hidden stories of East and South East Asian communities in Liverpool. The sharing event and exhibition held in September 2023 at Tate Liverpool showcased the outcomes of the project. Emily is a member of the CCEL and holds a Collaborative Doctoral Award with Tate Liverpool.
Material Cultures of Play Symposium.
This interdisciplinary one-day symposium was held in May 2023 at the CCEL. Talks brought together disciplines including media, cultural studies, art history, archaeology, English literature, Latin American studies, photography studies and architecture, to reflect on the places, objects, practices and times of play. Speakers were: Jordana Blejmar & Erika Teichert, Peter Buse, Luca Csepely-Knorr & Amber Roberts Matthew Fitzjohn & Peta Bulmer, Ben Highmore, David Hopkins, and Joe Moshenska.
See our University webpages here. Enquiries: contact Prof. Michelle Henning or Dr. Les Roberts. If you would like to be notified of live or online events at the CCEL, join our mailing list by emailing us here.
The Centre for Culture and Everyday Life,
School of the Arts,
University of Liverpool,
19-23 Abercromby Square,
Liverpool,
L69 7ZG
United Kingdom
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