Paper short abstract:

This presentation develops a series of proposals to enhance the concrete conceptual and methodological underpinning of visual research in the social sciences. Discussed aspects include how to extend our notion of the ‘visual’ and work towards more explicit and practical methodologies.

Paper long abstract:

Visual and multimodal approaches to the study of society seek to take full advantage of a central sensory channel in our knowledge of the world – vision – as well as some of our other senses, supported by rapidly evolving technologies to gather, process and communicate this knowledge. However, more solid and explicit methodologies are needed to help to resolve possible misconceptions and insecurities and to entice more researchers to consider this varied set of research tools as viable and complementary options for doing truly empirical multisensory and multimodal social science research.

Therefore this presentation will develop a series of proposals to enhance the concrete conceptual and methodological underpinning of visual research in the social sciences. Aspects that will be discussed include the need: to extend our notion of the ‘visual’; to expand the array of visual methods and technologies; to support different sources and contexts of visual production; to fully explore different analytical foci of visual research; to clarify the limits and strengths of prevalent ‘visual/image analysis’ frameworks; to work towards a more integrated and inclusive methodologies; to examine the changing boundaries between researcher, researched and publics; to evaluate recent and emerging trends in visual research; to improve visual competencies and forms of collaboration; and to explore new opportunities for presenting visual research.