ABOUT

Black and white portrait of a woman with a shaved head, smiling, wearing a jacket and a t-shirt.

Dr Megan Carnrite is an artist, researcher, and educator based in London.

Her practice and research focus on photography and its relationship to the body, with a particular interest in cameraless processes, abstraction, and material intervention, often informed by psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and performance art. She is committed to an interdisciplinary approach, using creative work and theoretical investigation in the service of new knowledge, aiming to reshape conceptions of the frameworks of photography.

Her PhD thesis, Cameraless Photography and the Body, argued that direct bodily engagement with light-sensitive materials constitutes a critical practice capable of dismantling the hierarchical perspectival systems through which photographic representation is conventionally organised. The research was underpinned by a practice-led methodology in which the colour darkroom served as a site for play and embodied inquiry.

Full CV available upon request.

2026 Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, Advance HE Fellowship, University of Westminster
(in progress, expected completion autumn 2026)

2025 PhD, Photography, University of Westminster
Practice-led thesis: Cameraless Photography and the Body

2020 MA, University of Chicago
Art History, curatorial practice concentration
Written thesis: The Need for Photobook Display Specific Museum Practices as Illustrated by Brassaï’s Transmutations

2019 MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art
Photographic and Electronic Media, curatorial practice concentration

2016 BFA, Metropolitan State University of Denver
Studio Art, photography concentration

Education

2026 Visibility and Power: Photography as an Instrument of Control, Critical Legal Conference 2026

2026 Cape Town Photography Festival

2026 Incheon World University Photography Festival

2026 The Abstracted Subject: Ethics, Power, and the Photographed Body, Photography Ethics Symposium

2026 Reaching Beyond: Photography, the Limits of Vision, and New Exorcist, keynote lecture, Beichen Zhang: New Exorcist

2025 Alien Material (solo exhibition), London Gallery West, University of Westminster

2025 Tracing the Body: Light, Time, and Touch, artist talk, [c]CC Art School

2025 Incheon World University Photography Festival

2025 Play and Production: The Role of Boundary Breaking Play in the Photographic Darkroom, Format25 Conference: Conflicted

2024 “I Have Seen My Death:” The X-Ray And A New Vision Of The Corporeal Landscape, International Conference of Photography & Theory: Deathscapes: Histories of Photography & Contemporary Photographic Practices

2023 15 Flourishing Latin American Artists in South Florida, Essay Contributor and English Language Editor, Katherine Chacón (editor), Pan Paniscus Art Services

2023 making/visible (group exhibition), Practice Space, University of Westminster

2022 Look Up and Look Beyond, film screening, curated by Dr Julie Marsh

Recent Publications and Exhibitions

2024 - 2026 Visiting Lecturer, School of Art, University of Westminster

2025 Project Coordinator, Vertically Integrated Projects for Sustainable Development, University of Westminster

2017 - 2018 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Maryland Institute College of Art

2018 Kress Fellow, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, College Art Association

2016 Teaching Assistant, Metropolitan State University of Denver

2015 Untitled Final Fridays Intern, Denver Art Museum

Teaching

2020 Research Assistant, Chicago Object Study Initiative, Modern Design and Modern Culture, University of Chicago

2019 Co-Curator,  Down Time: On the Art of Retreat, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago

2018 Research Assistant, Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies, Punta della Dogana, Venice, 2021

2018 Co-Curator, Counternarratives: Performance and Actions in Public Space, Maryland Institute College of Art

2018 Graduate Curatorial Fellow, Maryland Institute College of Art

2017 - 2019 Graduate Exhibitions Curator, Maryland Institute College of Art

Curatorial

2026 Beichen Zhang: New Exorcist at Asymmetry, Critical Wednesday, [cloud]

2025 Featured Artist, Pioneering Practices: Contemporary Female Photographers Working With Alternative Photo Processes, conference paper by Laura Perdrizet, Woman of Photography Conference

Press