Lee Douglas
Anthropologist, filmmaker, and photographer. PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from New York University, graduate of the NYU Program in Culture & Media, and MSc in Visual Anthropology from Oxford University.
Her doctoral thesis, “Producing Historical Knowledge in a World of Absence: Forensic Science, Cultures of Documentation, and the Politics of Memory in Post-Franco Spain,” examines the intersection of forensic science, modes of documentation, and image-making practices related to the excavation of mass graves and the identification of remains in post-Franco Spain. Paying close attention to the historical, social, and political uses use of forensic evidence, her research asks what the entanglement between science and visual representation reveals about the production and mobilization of knowledge in times of economic austerity and political change. Her research has received support from a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, a Marie Curie Fellowship, and a DPDF Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council.
In addition to her current work in Spain, Douglas has conducted ethnographic and archival research for projects that combine sociocultural analysis and image production in places as diverse as Santiago, Chile; Cordóba, Argentina; and her hometown of Dallas, Texas. She is a contributor to the publication and exhibition Human Rights / Copy Rights: Visual Archives in the Age of Declassification (University of Chile, Museum of Contemporary Art), the co-curator of Artless Photographs, a multimedia exhibit showcased at the Cincinnati Photography Biennial, and a co-producer of the e-book Chile from within, produced with Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas. She is co-founder and member of the visual anthropology collective materiaprimaLAB and the visual research initiative SplitScreen, both based in Madrid. She is also the Photo Essay Editor for Anthropology Now.
Select Publications:
Douglas, L. (forthcoming). “Bones, Documents, & DNA: Cultural Property at the Margins of the Law.” In: Jane Anderson & Haidy Geismar (eds.), Cultural Property (Companion Series), London: Routledge.
Douglas, L. 2015. “The Arts of Recognition.” In Anthropology Now, 7(3).
Douglas, L. 2014. “Mass Graves Gone Missing: Producing Knowledge in a World of Absence.” In Culture & History, 3(2): e022. http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.022
Douglas, L. (2013). “The Evidentiary Regimes of Science and Sight: Forensic Science and the Exhumation of the Past.” In: Cristián Gómez-Moya (ed.), Human Rights / Copy Rights: Visual Archives in the Age of Declassification. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo.
