Val Williams is a writer and curator. Since 2005 she has been Professor of the History and Culture of Photography at the University of the Arts London and Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) at the London College of Communication. She is a founder editor of the Journal of Photography & Culture and among projects which she has initiated or co-founded are Impressions Gallery of Photography (now Impressions) 1971-1981; the Shoreditch Biennale, 1996 & 1998; the Oral History of British Photography at the BL National Sound Archive (1992- 96); the Moose on the Loose Biennale of Research (2013&2015); the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (2003-) and the Journal of Photography & Culture (2008- ). She was the Curator of exhibitions and collections at the Hasselblad Centre, Goteborg from 1999-2002. She has written widely about photography across media, from journalism to academic texts, and has specialised in curatorship, in exploring British photography in the 20th and 21st centuries, in the history of women in photography, vernacular photography, war and conflict and the family.
