Richard Chalfen, PhD

Richard Chalfen, Ph.D. joined CMCH in 1997 and now serves as a senior staff member of the VIA research team. As Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Temple University (Philadelphia/Tokyo), he is best known for his cross-cultural research in participant media and indigenous media, and for developing the field of Home Media Studies, integrating interests in visual culture, personal communication, and cultural anthropology. His most recent book is entitled Photogaffes: Family Snapshots and Social Dilemmas (2012).

Dr. Chalfen has authored four other books and over 130 scholarly papers on visual communication/anthropology/sociology and contributed to the emergence of a medically relevant applied visual anthropology. He has undertaken fieldwork with the Navajo in Arizona, African American and Anglo American teenagers in Philadelphia, Japanese American families in Los Angeles, CA and Gallup, New Mexico as well as Japanese families living in Tokyo. Currently he is completing a book, Snapping and Wrapping: Essays on Japanese Home Media focused on the pictorial features of Japanese vernacular photography and related visual forms. He continues to lecture internationally having taught summer sessions in Italy, Japan and most recently at the University of Antwerp, Belgium focused on applying visual research methods in urban contexts.