The Visual in Media, Culture, Society & History (VISUAL)

The VISUAL cluster centers around ‘the visual’ as an empirical domain. This includes two-dimensional images like photographs, artistic images, comics and graffiti, and other visual aspects of social, political and cultural life such as material culture, fashion, moving images in film, television and games, big visual data and short-form videos on social media. Architecture, and design as a means of providing visual orientation as well as the presentation of the self are also of interest. 

This cluster provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers concerned with methodological questions regarding researching the visual: (Visual) content analysis, video analysis, (moving) image analysis, methods of (digital) visual ethnography, the analysis of text-image-relations, and methods to analyze big visual data can be discussed. 

Researchers involved in this cluster collaborate on specific topics surrounding the visual, aiming to further develop our understanding of the role of the visual in culture and society. Topics include but are not limited to, e.g. images and visual communication in politics, advertising, social media, science (communication), protests, digital self-presentation, (iconic) images in cultural history and contemporary (popular) culture; big image data in cultural heritage institutions; visibility and invisibility concerning (in)equality, the role of design in structuring everyday life.