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.
Tracy Xavia Karner
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.
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.
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.
Anja Weller
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.
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.
My research uses participatory visual methods, including photovoice, drawing, cellphilms and digital story telling. My current projects include the Networks for Change and Wellbeing: Girl-led ‘From the Ground Up’ Policy-making to Address Sexual Violence in Canada and South Africa, in which I am co-PI with Claudia Mitchell (McGill University). Claudia and I have co-editor the 2018 book: Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speak Back Through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence. Rotterdam: Brill/Sense Publishers.
As recognition for my work on addressing poverty in rural communities, I was the 2012 winner of the Distinguished Women in Science (Humanities) Award presented by the National Department of Science and Technology in South Africa. In 2014, I was an Echidna Global Scholar at Brookings Institutions’ Centre for Universal Education, where I completed a research report: The Need for Quality Sexual and Reproductive Health Education to Address Barriers to Girls’ Educational Outcomes in South Africa. Washington, DC: Centre for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution.
