I am a lens-based artist, educator, and scholar whose work explores the relations between the perceptual and the social. My current research is grounded in a belief that the social is inherently political and that visual studies provides distinct opportunities to engage and understand the affective nature of being with difference.

I am Convenor of the Visual Methods Group and Chair of the Forensic Psychology Research Group at Middlesex University, London. I have a background in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and a PhD in Social Psychology.

Timothy Shortell is a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is a social psychologist studying urban geography using visual spatial semiotics.

Laura Krystal Porterfield, Ph.D. is an urban educator, visualist, and youth culture scholar. Having grown up in El Paso, Texas, Laura is the daughter of two Mississippi transplants who instilled in her the value and promise of higher education.

I’m a Visiting Research Fellow within the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, University of London, Education Director of the Urban Photographers Association, Organiser of the International Urban Photography Summer School and the Competition Organiser for UrbanPhotoFest…

I studied media and communication studies at the University of Technology Chemnitz and finished my Ph.D. in visual communication. In my dissertation, I developed the creative interview as an alternative to language-based interviews to access implicit knowledge and imaginations constructed in the everyday life.

Although I am probably much better known as a Sociologist who studies Urban Neighborhoods and much more likely to define myself as an Activist or Public Scholar, almost all of my work has been “visual” in one way or another.

I am Professor and John Langalibalele Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. My areas of research include rural education, gender and education, sexual and reproductive health education, girlhood studies and girls education in Southern African contexts.

I am a professor at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, in Seville where I teach courses in Anthropology of Communication, Cultural Anthropology, and Migration.

I am the director of the Social Science Research Center and a professor in the department of sociology at DePaul University where I teach courses on substance use and abuse, underground economies, street gangs…

I am an associate professor of Sociology and the coordinator of the LGBT Studies program at Kent State University. I primarily teach in the Master’s program in Criminology & Criminal Justice, where my focus is in Victimology and diversity.

I have been involved with IVSA since I attended the first Bologna meetings 1996. This was also my introduction to visually focused research. As a long time photo-enthusiast, I am both a maker and appreciator of photographs of all genres. The IVSA offered a way to bring both my love of photography together with my academic pursuits.

In taking images, freezing moments, visual methods, as photography, allows us to discover how rich reality truly is. I discovered visual methods at the end of my undergraduate career, through an opportunity to conduct disaster research, and documenting disparities in storm water infrastructure across underprivileged communities…