I work with material history and film. I'm interested in how our experience of work and industrial society is shaped out of the material past. And I'm interested in methods of researching and relaying that experience through film.

    • The material constitution and histories of industry, energy and work

    • Phenomenological approaches to historical experience: how we experience history, and how history presents itself to us in different ways and in different contexts

    • Historical experience post-globalization

    • Everyday political economy

    • Traditions in oral history, social documentary photography and ethnographic film

  • Bradford Forwards and Backwards (2025)

    AHRC-funded project on material history and post-industrial experience

    The Man From Tormentor (2021)

    Machine kink and industrial reinvention in the Forest of Dean

  • I’m currently working on a longer term project about energy distribution in the UK, looking specifically at downstream oil and gas.

    I also work in commissioned film, directing projects for research institutes and archives including KCL, Imperial, Cambridge University, UKDRI and the War Graves Commission.

  • calmurphybarton[at]protonmail.com