mama The Nordic Network for Visual Social Science arranges its second conference in Stockholm October 25-27, 2007 (please note, dates have been corrected by the committee).
First announcement and call for papers and presentations (abstract submission before June 15)
The conference will be held during three days with a program combining
- Presentations by and meetings with Nordic and international scholars
- Workshops on subjects and questions central to visual studies
- Seminars where doctoral students and established scholars present visual research
Scholars from the Nordic and Baltic countries and, particularly, doctoral students, with a strong visual orientation in their dissertation/work, are invited to participate and present their work. The visual material can take any form – photography, film, comic strips or something else – but it should be central to the work presented. It can be a source or a tool for exploring and analyzing society, history or the impact of verbal versus visual, as well as a way of representing the research. The aim of the meeting is to provide new experiences and perspectives, strengthen visual studies in the social sciences in the Nordic countries, and to establish and develop an interdisplinary platform for this work. The organising committee strongly encourages participants to include visual material in their presentation and to focus their discussions on the visual aspects of their work.
Please send before June 15 a title and short abstract – not more 500 words – of the work you want to present and your research plans, and for doctoral students also a few words from your supervisor. The adress is: paul.fuehrer@sociology.su.se Costs (for travel, accommodation and meals) for participants who present papers will be paid by funds kindly provided by the Nordic Council of Ministers through NordForsk. Observers are expected to cover their own costs.
Possible themes for presentations include, for instance:
The role of the visual in social interaction and integration of groups and communities Visualisation in boundary work, niche definitions and social exclusion processes Visual objects as interaction foci, sharing images and relating to them in other ways Visual phenomena vs visual study of various (indeed any) social phenomena Art and other imaging, including “documentary” images of different kinds “Aesthetic” versus “scientific” photography/film as working material “Hidden history” revealed through photography/film Visual fictions and discourses of fact and truth (in journalism and media).
Like our previous conference “A Closer Look” held in Roskilde in November 2006, this meeting “Through the Image” summarizes different concerns as forms of visual practice. Visual knowing or the making of visual knowledge is manifested in many different research activities, qualitative and quantitative, from photographing people to asking them to photograph, from using archived images to creating representations of research results, from documenting the material traces of human relationships to emphasizing the fleeting character of social interaction. This range of perspectives is further aimed at empowering by making visible both the views and viewpoints of studied persons, and incorporating these standpoints in a reflected and critical manner into research design.
The organizers are grateful if you distribute this invitation to anyone who might be interested to take part in the meeting.
Welcome to Stockholm!
On behalf of the network steering group
Arni Sverrisson, Karin Becker, Annette Rosengren
This and other information will be posted at http://visual.sociology.su.se and at http://groups.google.com/group/nordic-visual-studies?hl=en
