The 2025 International Visual Sociology Association Conference invites abstracts for papers, films/videos, exhibition contributions, and workshops that embrace diverse and multidisciplinary approaches in the realms of visual sociology and broader visual studies. The 2025 Conference especially sheds light on the following dynamics of visual scholarship in three aspects:

1. Decentering Power in Visual Studies: The 2025 Conference pays attention to how diverse visual studies approaches have challenged and overcome certain centralizing powers in and out of visual scholarships, such as logocentrism, linguacentrism, ocularcentrism, Westerncentrism, and anthropocentrism.  The dynamism that the history of visual studies has ironically demonstrated by its being marginalized and unjustly contrasted with the established lingua-centric studies is worth noting. Especially in social sciences, the belief that positivist approaches or quantifications of data could only guarantee objective and scientific studies continuously consigned visual studies to the realm of the unscientific and arbitrary, which led to visual studies’ loss of citizenship in the social scientific world (Harper 1988, 58-59; Harrison 1996, 76-79; Kim 2023, 49). Such viewpoints on visual data, however, connect to the perspective on representation through research in general, that is, the idea of how a scholar can objectively represent their object of research, which is not necessarily a limited issue of visual studies but that of social science as a whole.  The centralizing tendency in social science academia’s system of representation has been criticized and reflexively agonized by recent generation scholars whose critiques resonate with the decentralizing agenda of visual studies as qualitative research. That being said, the visual world also has constituted a particular centrality. The process that vision has consolidated its status as a hegemonic sense since the beginning of the modern era is connected to the system of belief that visual sense can capture the world (Levin 1993, 2-3; Jay 1994, 80-81). Recent visual studies approaches are in line with the critiques on how to challenge ocularcentrism, or how to doubt the hegemony of vision in the hierarchy of dispersed, diverse senses. This also relates to the agenda of non-representational methodologies as “diverse work that seeks better to cope with our self-evidently more-than-human, more-than-textual, multisensual worlds” (Larimer, 2005: 83). Visual studies are also faced with various issues in global dynamics, such as Western-centrism, coloniality/postcoloniality, racism and racial hierarchies, and/or cultural imperialism, that drastically formed in the visual cultures centering on Western egotistical industries, art worlds, and academic and intellectual communities. This aspect particularly connects to IVSA’s recent endeavor to reconfigure research ethics in visual studies by decolonizing its code of ethics and guidelines.

2. In/Visible Asia: The 2025 Conference in Suwon will be the first in IVSA’s history to be held in East Asia and will, therefore, serve as important momentum to boost reflexive explorations and decolonizing practices in Western-centered visual scholarship. Asian-ness and its visual representations have been recently situated in proximity to the center of the global media and entertainment industry, along with other various cultural fields, including food, tourism, cosmetics, and high arts. The visual and other sensual positionality of Asian-ness has been re-located through the enhanced visibility of Asian and diasporic Asian agencies in the mainstream media. However, at the same time, there are still intendedly unseen, or out of ignorance, realities of Asia, a large part of which is former colonies and now is functioning as cheap labor sources, waste dumpsites, sex tourist destinations, and drug pipelines. The 2025 IVSA Conference in Asia will shed light on both visible and invisible faces of Asia from visual studies perspectives.

3. Refocusing the Lens of Filmic Sociology – South Korea’s Legacy: Pairing with the Visualista Film Festival, the 2025 Conference stresses a specific tradition in visual studies: filmic sociology. South Korea’s visual sociology as an academic discipline is relatively small and is now expecting a leap, but its legacy in filmmaking is not negligible. From a 33-year-long ethnography-turned-film essay on an urban displaced family to an ethnofiction film that cinematized a victimized woman’s dream as a result of a long-term ethnographic relationship, and to a series of virtual reality (VR) films bringing the viewers to sites of victimization, this theme will be an opportunity for active conversations between visual scholars and sociological filmmakers. This will also allow ample room for multidisciplinary conversations among diverse disciplines in visual studies, including visual sociology, film & media studies, visual anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, visual arts, and more.

Submission Guidelines

All presenters should submit abstracts of no more than 250 words through the EasyChair conference management system. Prior to submitting, you will need to create an EasyChair account if you do not already have one. The submission deadline is January 15, 2025. The official language is English, but presentations in Korean are also welcome. 

Abstracts submitted through EasyChair must include the following:

• Title of presentation
• Name of presenter(s) as it will appear in the program
• Organization/Affiliation of the presenter(s)
• Email address of the presenter(s)
• Type of submission (paper, workshop, etc.) at the top of the abstract
• Abstract text (250 words, maximum)
• Keywords (three or four)

All conference presenters and attendees must be members of the IVSA. Participants can only be a lead author on one presentation. In the case of multiple-authored papers, all authors must be members of the IVSA and pay conference fees to be listed on the program.

The 2025 IVSA conference committees will select submissions for inclusion in panel and workshop sessions. Workshops at previous IVSA conferences have included on-site photo and film assignments and editing workshops. Workshops usually take place during the four days of the conference, and can include a one- to two-hour session on the first day (or a longer one as a pre-conference workshop) and a session on the final day for participants to present their work.

All submissions, regardless of their central medium, will be evaluated on their scholarly, artistic, and scientific-analytic merit.

Proposals need not specifically address the title and themes of the conference. We welcome abstracts that address topics and critical approaches adopting visual theories and/or methods, including, but not limited to, the following:

List of Possible Topics

Call for Films and Exhibition

Visualista Film Festival

• The Visualista Film Festival is an integral part of our annual conference. We invite films and film-based artefacts that explore aspects of visual sociology, from visual dimensions and documentation of social life to the way people perform creative visualization processes. Filmmakers must demonstrate clear theoretical underpinnings and context to their filmic work. We will accept films of any length and treatment, as well as non-linear film-based artefacts and interactive formats. Film artefacts that focus on process rather than product will also be considered. We value diversity in all forms and welcome submissions from around the world. Films made in local languages must carry English subtitles.

• All submissions of films must be made through our FilmFreeway listing, where full details and guidelines can be found. Deadline: January 31, 2025 (Notification: April 1, 2025). To submit, visit https://filmfreeway.com/visualistafilmfestival

Visual Studies Exhibition

• As one component of the conference, IVSA and its affiliate journal, Visual Studies, are collaborating to organize an annual exhibition to facilitate dialogue among practitioners and scholars at the intersection of multiple approaches and rationalities. It invites a collective, critical reflection on what being visually engaged could mean outside the economy of scholarly knowledge and practices. In creating a space where IVSA members, visual social scientists, artists, and practitioners can experiment with visuals, visuality, and visualization (including beyond “the visual” per se through sounds and other media), we invite participants to explore how they approach the boundary between (their) scholarship and (their) art.

  Details regarding the exhibition opening, location, and duration during the conference will be specified later. Possible publication opportunities for the artists may be available in a forthcoming Visual Studies issue.

  Through this project, Visual Studies continues a long-entertained idea that started with the journal’s 2022 online exhibition, “What is an image?”: curating an exhibition aligned with the annual conference theme. In recent years, the journal has increasingly expanded its approach to visuals and aesthetics while continuously reflecting on its practices and engagement. (For example, formats such as Picture/talks, Visual Essays, and curating a forthcoming, joint issue with the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, United Kingdom.) While these endeavors allow Visual Studies to better represent the diversity of visual scholarship, this evolution is less a matter of long-term strategy than the result of a fast-growing collective commitment toward inclusivity, reflexivity, and experimentation within the journal’s editorial team. And, as the IVSA conference expands towards less writing-centered media of dissemination, including through a dedicated Visualistas film festival to be launched in 2025, we want the IVSA to continue to support the broader recognition of art-based, if not radically experimental, forms of research.

• Submissions may include but are not limited to paintings, drawings, photographs, art films, video installations, multimedia installations, filmed performances, and live performances. We also encourage submissions addressing the limits and definitions of “the visual” and its materialities, by emphasizing other senses and sensibilities. 

• Submit through Google form. Deadline to submit: January 15, 2025 (Notifications: March 1, 2025). Please contact Julie Patarin-Jossec on behalf of the curation team at patarinjossec.julie[at]gmail.com with inquiries.

Venue

The 2025 IVSA Conference will be hosted by Ajou University in Suwon, South Korea (There will not be a hybrid option).

  · Date: June 25 – 28, 2025 (4 days)

  · Venue: Ajou University (Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to ivsa2025@gmail.com.