Meet the team
Melissa Nolas is co-Founder and Director of the Children’s Photography Archive; she is a photographer, writer, and researcher. A visual sociologist before she even knew what that was, she has been taking photographs since the age of 10 and loves working with children, young people, their teachers, community and youth workers. To her role as Director of the CPA, she brings over 20 years’ worth of educational, research and leadership experience gained at a number of UK universities and third sector organisations. She has published widely on childhood, gender, participation, archives, health, publics and photography, and has curated three exhibitions of children’s photography.
Christos Varvantakis is a social anthropologist and co-founder of the Children’s Photography Archive. As a Senior Partner Manager at Wikimedia Deutschland, his work focuses on open knowledge and the digital commons and to this end he is responsible for bringing together software engineers, communities, and GLAM organisations in the adoption and maintenance of linked open data repositories. Prior to joining Wikimedia Deutschland, he worked on a number of international research projects based in German, Greek and UK universities and was the Head of Programming at Ethnofest, the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival. He has published widely in visual anthoropology, sociology and childhood and youth studies.
The work of the Children’s Photography Archive is supported by an international advisory group who meet once a year.
Konstantinos Aivaliotis is Assistant Professor at the Cultural Technology and Communication department of the University of Aegean and the co-founder and director of the ETHNOFEST organisation and titular festival. He holds degrees in Socio-cultural and Visual Anthropology (UK, Goldsmiths College) and Anthropology of Education (France, Univ. Rouen) and his work and academic interests focus on directing and screenwriting for creative documentaries, as well as documentary history and theory, audiovisual heritage, film festivals, and film markets, applying an interdisciplinary lens to the study of cultural industries.
Jose Bellido is Reader in Law at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. He is the Spanish national editor of Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) an online archive curated by Lionel Bently & Martin Kretschmer. He is particularly interested in the history of intellectual property law and has additional research interests in legal theory, evidence, and legal history. His recent book projects are Landmark Cases in Intellectual Property Law (Hart Publishing, 2017) and Adventures in Childhood. Intellectual Property, Imagination and the Business of Play (Cambridge University Press, 2022), co-authored with Kathy Bowrey.
Itza A. Carbajal is New Orleans born Texas raised American doctoral student in Information Science at the University of Washington Information School focusing on children and their records. Carbajal’s dissertation research analyzes how records embody childhood trauma as well as how archival records may provide release or relief from traumatic memories. Previously, she worked as the Latin American Metadata Librarian for LLILAS Benson at the University of Texas Austin. She holds a Master of Science in Information Studies from UT Austin and a dual-degree Bachelor of Arts in History and English with a concentration on creative writing and legal studies from UT San Antonio.
Rebecca Coleman is Professor at the University of Bristol, UK. She has worked with image-based methodologies (drawing, collaging, photography, video-making) to explore people’s sensory and embodied experiences of media. She is now especially interested in the kinds of futures imagined by people who aren’t usually involved in the design and implementation of digital technologies.
Alice Corble (she/her) Dr Alice Corble is Lecturer in Library & Information Studies and Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, at UCL, with a practitioner background in librarianship and community organising. Her current research examines academic library development and living archival legacies through decolonial and reparative justice frameworks, across transnational Caribbean and British contexts.
Elina Moraitopoulou’s work sits at the intersection of academia and civil society, where research meets community and where she support projects and organisations working towards more just socio-ecological futures. Elina’s interdisciplinary practice brings together educational design, participatory research and evaluation, and project development, informed by memory and eco-social pedagogies, critical theories of childhood, youth and care, and participatory and creative methodologies. Through the Children’s Photography Archive, she has grown increasingly interested in archiving with children and communities as a practice of knowledge co-production and justice.
Gayatri Nair is an arts manager and educator based in Chennai, India. A trained computer engineer who transitioned to the arts, she is Co-founder of the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation and lead the CPB Prism, its education wing, until 2026. She develops arts-based curricula, trains teachers, publishes children’s books, and runs workshops and fellowships supporting womxn artists. She also founded The Kala Collective, a community for female-identifying artists.
Ioanna Noula (PhD) is a researcher and advisor on children’s rights, tech policy, digital citizenship and governance. She is the ounder and project lead of COR, the Children’s Online Redress Sandbox. Ioanna was one of the co-founders of the Internet Commission, an independent non-profit organisation with the mission to advance online platforms’ accountability and ethical business practice. She has also worked in Higher Education as a researcher at the UCL-Institute of Education, the University of Leeds and LSE’s Department of Media and Communications where she is a Visiting Fellow since 2016.
Jane Joo Park is Director of Philanthropy at Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. She has extensive experience in philanthropy as both a professional fundraiser and fundraising consultant working with an array of organizations in the arts, education, humanitarian aid, and international NGOS among others. A long-time novice photographer, she is the mother of three children and lives with her family in Ann Arbor. Michigan.
Claire Prater is an experienced Project Manager having worked nationally and internationally with various companies including Royal Mail International, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the University of Sussex. She is the Executive Manager of European Social Work Research Association where she is directly responsible for the day-to-day management of the Association and provides support to the ESWRA Board, Committees, Seminar series, and annual conference. Claire lives in Hove, U.K., with her two children (well young adults!), two elderly cats, and a very unruly garden. She enjoys swimming in the sea …. in the summer!
The Children’s Photography Archive has been supported in the past by Gabriella Giannachi (2020-2025); Hyo Yoon Kang (2021-2026); Annebella Pollen (2021-2024); Johannes Schoening (2020-2025). We are grateful for their time and expertise.
The Children’s Photography Archive website is bought to you by Apostolis Troulitakis.