Photography, MA

We look forward to meeting you for the first time during Welcome Week (14 - 18 September 2026).​

During Welcome Week we will introduce you to the teaching and technical team, your Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) and the equipment and spaces available to you throughout the programme. 

You will also get to meet your cohort and start your MA Photography journey.

Your Course

In your first trimester you'll be studying two modules:

• Situating Photographic Practices (30 credits) with Carl Bigmore

• Creative Collaborations (30 credits) with Matt Wright

Together these will ease you into the MA, helping you place your own practice within broader photographic contexts and start building working relationships with your fellow students and the creative professionals connected to the course.

All teaching takes place on campus here in Canterbury. You can expect a mix of lectures / seminars / workshops / practical sessions within our specialist spaces, including the darkroom, printmaking and photographic studios - all designed to develop both your critical thinking and your practical work.

We make the most of our location too — London is on the doorstep, and Kent's creative coastal towns like Folkestone, Margate, and Whitstable are a real part of what makes this course distinctive.

Blackboard and Online Systems

You'll use Blackboard and Microsoft Teams to access course materials, assignment briefs, and messages from your tutors. You'll get your login details before you start, and it's worth having a look around the platform before you arrive so it feels familiar from day one.

Your First Few Weeks

Welcome Week is a chance to meet the teaching and technical team, get to know the spaces and equipment available to you, and — perhaps most importantly — meet your cohort. Your Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) will also be introduced to you during this time, and they'll be a key point of support throughout your studies.

The first weeks of teaching are designed to help you find your feet. There's no pressure to have everything figured out straight away — this is a time for exploration, conversation, and starting to shape your ideas.

Before You Arrive

A few things worth doing before September:

• Start thinking about the themes and questions that feel most alive in your practice right now — your tutors will want to hear about them early on. Remember you will be shaping your projects and external relationships, so it’s good to come with some ideas in development.

• Have a browse of contemporary photography practitioners, publications, or exhibitions that interest you. We recommend you have a good understanding of the area of photography which most excites you and some research ideas related to this.

Equipment

The course works across both analogue and digital approaches, so we have a range of bookable equipment which supports a range of ways to make images. This can be from high-end digital capture to colour or BW analogue or mixed media printing approaches. All of these are supported on the programme by the tutors and technical team.

​​Bate, D. (2020) Photography: The Key Concepts. 2nd ed, Bloomsbury.

​Cotton, C (2020) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson. ​