Peter Metelerkamp (Senior Teaching Fellow)

Peter Metelerkamp studied English and Philosophy before going on to postgraduate studies in English, Film Production, Adult Education, and Documentary Photography.

With wide experience as a writer, editor, producer and director, Peter teaches mainly in these areas.

He is interested in the teaching/learning process, and the ways that educational practices and environments may best serve the needs of students in a rapidly changing world. He is particularly committed to experiential and social learning, and to modes of praxis based on the development of embedded understanding. This approach informs the core design and pedagogy of the MA in Film and TV Production and the units he leads.

Peter has been Programme Director of the MA in Film and TV Production for many years, and has seen graduates from over 40 countries go on to fulfilling careers and international recognition.

His main areas of personal interest are the cultures and histories of settler presence in Southern Africa, which he explores through documentary still photography.

As a researcher and photographer, he is particularly interested in the way photographs provide a complex vehicle for reflection on, and understanding of, our world, and how the formal properties of pictures convey feelings and ideas. This embraces the social and political meaning of images, the relationship between authorship and objectivity, and issues in documentary process and practice.

In 2007 he completed an AHRC-funded project photographing the traces and legacy of the 1820 settlers in South Africa, with exhibitions in November 2007 at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, and in South Africa in April 2008. A selection of images from the project may be seen at Settler Country

In 2008 he completed another AHRC-funded project photographing buildings and townscapes in small villages in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, as a further enquiry into the contours and circumstances of settler culture and its negotiation with environment and historical change. A selection of images from the project may be seen at Settler Lands

A small sample of his more general work can be seen at his personal site here

Peter would particularly welcome working with anyone interested in any aspect of documentary, especially in documenting colonial and post-colonial cultures.