IVSA Board Members
Greg Scott
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, consciousness, urban culture, ethnographic documentary film production, photographic/visual sociology, and other topics.
Susan Hansen
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. Although these are approaches usually confined to the analysis of transcribed video or audio data, in my current work I seek to apply some of the key methodological tenets of these approaches to the analysis of visual data. This allows attention to features not available through traditional forms of visual analyses – and in particular, attention to the everyday methods of sense-making used by members themselves, as opposed to the imposition of our own sociological analytic categories.
Yolanda Hernández-Albújar
I am a professor at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, in Seville where I teach courses in Anthropology of Communication, Cultural Anthropology, and Migration. In my courses as well as in my research I privilege the visual dimension to study and explore social experiences. I am particularly interested on gender, migration, and identity formation. My current research explores gender dynamics in refugee camps and settlements in Lebanon. Visual methods allow me to co-construct along with participants sociological knowledge that otherwise would be missed and to articulate participatory action research and communication research in ways that integrate women´s voices in a more democratic way.
Jerome Krase
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 came to my first International Visual Sociology Association meeting in 1997 at the suggestion of a member of the American Sociological Association Urban Community Section who thought what I did was “Visual Sociology.”
Molly Merryman
I am the founding director of Kent State University’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and an associate professor of Sociology. My scholarly and professional work focuses on marginalized voices and inequalities, and because of this I have found that documentary video provides the most meaningful methodological approach for me to use.
Tara Milbrandt
I discovered visual sociology at a conference in New York City in 2007 and have been a proud member of the IVSA since this time. I am an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alberta’s liberal arts and science campus, Augustana, which is located in central Alberta, Canada. I teach courses in social theory, visual sociology, sociology of community, media and contemporary culture. I am the editor for ‘Elicitations’, the reviews section of the journal ‘Imaginations: Cross-Cultural Image Studies’.
Laura Porterfield
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.
Timothy Shortell
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.
David Herman, Jr.
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.
Gill Golding
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. These roles allow me to engage with a broad range of discourses about the visual representation of cities and to promote excellence in urban photographic practice, research and education.
Relebohile Moletsane
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.
Suezen Salinas
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. Now, as a Graduate Student at the University of Houston in Houston Texas, I am learning to construct my own visual research lens, with a particular interest in comparative assessment between visual and traditional research questions.
Carolina Cambre
I am Associate Professor (Sociology of Education) at Concordia University, Montreal in Quebec, Canada. My work explores vernacular visual expression asking: How do people produce and direct the visual space. How is the image a doing? What are the social and cultural work/ings of images.
Christine Louveau de la Guigneraye
I’m associate professor at the University of Evry Paris-Saclay (France), in charge of the Visual and Filmic research focus of the sociological research laboratory (Centre Pierre Naville). I have a background in visual anthropology, a PhD in anthropology, a dissertation to qualify for full professor (French post-doctoral diploma) in filmic sociology.
Morena La Barba
I’m senior lecturer and founding member of the Visual Sociology Unit at the University of Geneva where I teach courses on visual methodologies and visual creation for social science. I studied political science and women’s studies at the University of Bologna and training in documentary filmmaking and journalism. In my PhD dissertation in in sociology I produce a sociological film.
Alexandra Tilman
I have a PhD in visual and filmic sociology and I teach at Evry university in France in connection with my dual practice as a filmmaker and sociology researcher. I make documentary films as part of research productions. The issues of margins, deviant trajectories, youth and alternative culture are at the heart of my work in filmic sociology.
