IVSA Board Members
Greg Scott
Greg Scott is a visual sociologist, multimedia artist, and filmmaker at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. He is the founding director of Sawbuck Productions, Inc., a non-profit organization that produces observational documentary films, experimental art films, virtual reality experiences, and large-scale public installation art. He is a co-founder of WILD AMERICAN DOGS, an interdisciplinary art duo focused on producing experimental films and performance, and of the Archive of Midwestern Culture, an institutionally recognized scholarly organization that documents creative life and artistic practice among people living in economically impoverished areas of the rural American Midwest.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
Mariko Smith
I undertake an interdisciplinary practice in academic research and the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) sector, specialising in visual sociology, contemporary art, museology, epistemology, and public history. I am currently the First Nations Assistant Curator at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia and an Honorary Associate in the School of Literature, Art & Media of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney; having previously been a Wingara Mura Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the University’s Sydney College of the Arts.
Patricia Prieto-Blanco
I work as a Lecturer in Digital Media Practice at the Sociology department, Lancaster University, UK. I am passionate about all things visual, and especially interested in media practices that involve people interacting with/through images.
Gaby David
I am a researcher and university lecturer. I hold a PhD in visual sociology from the Center for Art History and Theory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (EHESS), a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Paris 8 and Master’s degree in teaching English as a Foreign Language (ToEFL).
Han Sang Kim
I am an associate professor of sociology at Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea. My teaching interests include visual sociology, qualitative methods, and sociology of film and media. I have conducted research and written on the themes of film archives, ethics of photographic representation, post/colonial visual culture, and mobilities. My most recent book is Cine-Mobility: Twentieth-Century Transformations in Korea’s Film and Transportation (Harvard University Asia Center, 2022).
Wes Shrum
I’m a professor at Louisiana State University, a sociologist of science and technology with a primary focus on new communications media and social networks. In 1994, I began my research in Kenya, Ghana, and India where I’ve worked and filmed every summer since then, most recently in the urban slums.
