Nathaniel Brunt

Nathaniel Brunt is an award-winning interdisciplinary scholar, photographer and educator. His photographic and academic work critically examines modern armed conflict and the way it is, and has been, represented photographically. Trained as a cultural historian and documentary photographer, he is interested in the manner in which individuals, institutions and groups understand and make sense of their worlds visually during wartime.

Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Nathaniel obtained two master's degrees, from the University of Kent's War, Media and Society program and the Communication and Culture joint program at Ryerson and York universities. His first thesis, "The Blue Bench: Medicine, Photography and the First World War Facial Wound," examined the photographic history and social experiences of facially disfigured British soldiers during the First World War. His second master's project, which was supported by SSHRC and The Alexia Foundation, was "\#shaheed: A Photographic Study of Kashmir's Insurgency." It used photographs, both collected and produced, to explore the lives of young Kashmiri militants fighting in the ongoing insurgency in the region. In fall 2017, Nathaniel was an Alexia Foundation visiting scholar at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Nathaniel's photographic work has been featured in The Globe and Mail, Sharp Magazine, Photo District News and other publications. It has also been exhibited in Canada and internationally. He has received academic and photographic awards, including the CONTACT Portfolio Reviews Award, SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, IVSA John Rieger Award, PDN Photo Annual Student Award, and the Alexia Foundation Student Award. Nathaniel is co-director, with Alisha Sett, of the Kashmir Photo Collective, a digital resource of endangered photographs and related material about the histories of the Kashmir Valley. While diverse in format, Nathaniel's work is connected by a commitment to producing creative projects that personalize the often-abstract nature of modern war.