India Lawton

I am a Senior Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator in the School of Creative Industries at Southampton Solent University, where I have taught since 2016. I have also held the role of Interim Deputy Head (Education), contributing to strategic curriculum development and enhancement across programmes.

My teaching spans Foundation and undergraduate levels and is informed by my research interests in representation, embodiment, and cultural narratives. I am particularly interested in how curriculum design shapes student identity, authorship, and belonging. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), reflecting sustained leadership in higher education practice. 

My academic background includes a BA (Hons) in Photography (Arts University Bournemouth), an MA in Photographic Studies (University of Westminster), a PGCE and MA in Education (Oxford Brookes University). I am currently undertaking a practice-based PhD in Photography at Solent University.

My research explores the cultural construction of childbirth, trauma, and the maternal body through photographic and material practice. Drawing on feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural criticism, I examine how birth is mediated through medical, digital, and visual discourses, and how maternal embodiment is often sanitised, regulated, or rendered culturally invisible.

Through experimental photographic processes, including analogue interventions, material inscription, and AI-mediated image generation, my practice interrogates themes of abjection, memory, authorship, and sensory experience. I am particularly interested in how creative practice can function as a form of critical inquiry, challenging dominant narratives and expanding visual languages around birth and maternal subjectivity.

My work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, contributing to interdisciplinary dialogues across photography, visual culture, and maternal studies.