Marie La Starza is a photographic artist and educator whose practice spans over three decades, integrating making, teaching, and research. La Starza is currently Course Leader for the Creative Practice Foundation and BA Top-Up Degree, where she has spent over sixteen years working across further and higher education. Her approach, grounded in reflection, experimentation, and material enquiry, closely informs her own creative work. Rooted in photography yet extending into mixed media and traditional processes, La Starza’s practice explores the physical and sensorial qualities of the image. She approaches photography as a slow, contemplative act, attentive to how meaning emerges through process as well as outcome. Her work examines the quiet resonance of the everyday, emphasising narrative, sequencing, and the ethics of observation. Her research interests focus on the intersections of photography, materiality, and memory, with particular attention to how analogue and alternative processes can articulate personal and collective narratives. Drawing on theoretical frameworks she engages critically with ideas of archive, authorship, and post-photographic discourse. Alongside her artistic practice, La Starza is committed to fostering research-led teaching. She views her ongoing professional development as reciprocal, using her practice to enrich curriculum design while ensuring her teaching remains responsive to the evolving landscape of contemporary fine art.