Call for Expressions of Interest in Conducting Regional Visual Ethics Workshops

Application deadline: March 31

The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) is launching an open-ended selection procedure to create a network of regional workshops or discussion groups that will become an arena for exchanging thoughts and ideas on research ethics in visual studies, which will ideally set the path toward a revised Code of Research Ethics, originally drawn up in 2009.

In the Ethics Think Tank session at the last year’s IVSA annual meeting, there was a considerable push for an official table to continue the discussion on the issues of how to renovate and ‘decolonize’ visual ethics. IVSA acknowledges such demands from members and conference participants. This call for expressions of interest forms an effective platform for facilitating and implementing such productive conversations within regional boundaries and, thereby, at the transregional and global levels.

You may apply for (a) an individual member position of a regional unit who will be a seed member of the unit or (b) a regional unit that will run a regular workshop or discussion group on that regional basis.

Once the applications are collected, the IVSA board will mediate to liaise (1) between plural regional unit applicants from the same regional backgrounds, (2) between a regional unit applicant and individual member applicants from the same regional backgrounds, and (3) among individual member applicants from the same regional backgrounds.

The IVSA 2023 Conference Committee is currently organizing IVSA’s annual conference in Nairobi, Kenya, June 27-29, and this year’s Ethics Think Tank session will be constituted by active members of each regional unit. Before the annual conference, each regional unit will hold a regular workshop or group meeting to discuss IVSA’s Code of Research Ethics, especially research ethics-related issues that have stemmed from the region’s specific historical or geopolitical backgrounds that should be considered in revising the Code, certain ethical guidelines that cannot just be generally applied to every culture but should be discussed from a decolonizing and intersectional perspective, and/or new and ever-growing issues related to the rapid advancement of technologies and their non-reflexive application to our everyday visual life. While there is no specific funding available to support conference attendance, regional workshop representatives are eligible to apply for IVSA Travel Grants (please note that the deadline for Travel Grants is March 15, 2023).

Application proposals (±300 for individuals, ±500 for units) should include the applicant’s brief biographical note, the extent of the regional unit proposed, and a brief action plan until the IVSA 2023 Conference, and can be sent to Han Sang Kim (hansangkim.vs@gmail.com). The deadline for application proposals (to be included in the 2023 Ethics Think Tank) is Friday, March 31, 2023. Application proposals submitted thereafter will also be considered significant and IVSA will continue to encourage members to form their regional units to run ethics workshops.

If you have any questions, please contact Han Sang Kim (hansangkim.vs@gmail.com) and Susan Hansen (s.hansen@mdx.ac.uk).

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  • If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.

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    Visual culture is now the study of how to understand change in a world too enormous to see but vital to imagine.

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    The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.

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    Every photograph promises more than it delivers and delivers more than it intended.

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    Every photograph promises more than it delivers and delivers more than it intended.

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