Ella Ravilious
Design and Photography Curator, Researcher and Writer
About
I am a Curator: Architecture and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and I have worked at the Museum in various roles since 2005. Alongside my focus on design, I also specialise in photographic history. I am currently a PhD student at the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Ask me about the history of the V&A, its collections of design and photography, the Royal Photographic Society Collection, or the work of James Ravilious, Eric Ravilious, or Tirzah Garwood. I’ll either help or be able to put you in touch with the right contact.
TV/RADIO
Interviewed in Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War, Foxtrot Films, 2022 https://www.foxtrotfilms.com/films/eric-ravilious-drawn-to-war/
Featured in Secrets of the Museum, Series 3, Episode 3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016dty
Writing
Author: Eric Ravilious: Landscapes and Nature. Thames and Hudson/V&A (forthcoming, 2023
Co-editor (with Prof. Elizabeth Edwards): What Photographs Do: The making and remaking of museum cultures, UCL Press (forthcoming, 2023)
Chapter in The Idea of Italy: Photography and the British Imagination, 1840-1900, edited by Scott Wilcox and Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Yale Press, 2022
Co-authored chapter (with Dr. Omniya Abdel Barr) in Visions of Ancient Egypt, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, forthcoming 2022
I have written for a number of publications, including Source Magazine, the V&A Magazine, The Journal of the History of Photography and the RPS Journal.
Speaking
PHRC Annual Conference ‘Photographic History without Photographs’, June 2022
Presentation at ‘Colour Fever’ symposium at the V&A, November 2021
Presentation for the Daguerreian Society of the United States, October 2021
Taught session for The Photographer’s Gallery, September 2021
Get in touch
I am available for collaborations and talks worldwide.
Trusteeships
Beaford trustee 2020-present (and on archive steering committee since 2012) https://beaford.org/
Platform trustee 2014-present https://platformlondon.org/about-us/
Ella Ravilious 