IVSA 2021 Annual Conference
Virtual conference from 5-8 July 2021
As you know, we canceled the conference in Dublin the Dublin conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we rolled all accepted papers into the 2021 program. Our hope was that the 2021 conference could take place in Dublin and in-person, but that is not possible. Instead, we are organizing a virtual conference for 2021. We want to let you all know where things stand now and what to expect, as we move forward together in an ever-shifting global context.
Keeping with the same theme, “Visualizing Social Changes: Seen and Unseen,” our 2021 virtual conference will feature a mixture of asynchronous and synchronous content. The asynchronous content will consist of pre-recorded presentations from the authors/creators of the accepted papers. This content will be made available on the conference website in mid-June. Each paper (including yours!) will have a corresponding 8 to 10-minute (max.) videorecorded presentation (more details on this below). Upon submission to IVSA, videorecorded presentations will be grouped into themes by the conference committee. These videos will be curated and presented on the conference website in the weeks leading up to the live component of the conference. This will allow conference-goers to watch, learn, and prepare for lively real-time interaction during the synchronous engagement in July. Even in advance of the synchronous component, conference attendees will be able to engage with presenters via feedback forms that appear alongside the video presentations.
The synchronous (“live”) portion of the conference is scheduled for 5-8 July. This segment will feature a number of exciting engagements, including “how-to” workshops on visual methods, tutorials on visual analysis techniques, practical panels (e.g., how to get published in Visual Studies, how to navigate the job market as an early career visual scholar, etc.), a forum for the discussion of ethics in visual research, virtual poster sessions, online digital image exhibits, a panel on visual pedagogy and teaching practices, happy hours and other opportunities for informal socializing, and a series of Discussion Forums in which attendees will be able to interact with the creators/authors of selected paper presentations. The final event in the live segment of the conference will be our Annual General Meeting (AGM), a 90-minute gathering of IVSA members and leadership to discuss the current state of the organization and its plans for the future. All synchronous events will be recorded for later viewing by anyone who couldn’t attend the live session.
Visualizing Social Changes:
Seen and Unseen
A combination of visual sociology and social change provides a broad and welcoming theme. Visual sociologists have developed a specialty in visually chronicling and examining significant social changes, such as visual studies of deinidustrialization and rural decline and ethnic transitions in local neighbourhoods. While many social changes are physically, materially or socially visible and seen, others remain invisible and unseen, like changes in people’s values and beliefs, for example people becoming more liberal and progressive or more illiberal and populist. Of course, even values and beliefs can be manifest, for example, symbolically in slogans and posters, socially in protests and marches, and organizationally in social movements, civil society groups and political parties. The theme of the conference is meant to encompass the variety of ways to visualize social change, seen and unseen, while also posing a response to the challenge of social changes that have emerged in societies in recent times.
Presenter information
We are in the process of contacting all authors whose papers had been accepted for the Dublin conference with how to confirm their inclusion in the virtual conference. Details on the video submission process will be provided within the next month. In the meantime, we invite you to watch the “How To” videos produced by the team that devised Distribute 2020, to have ideas on how to present your paper. The joint recently held virtual conference of the Society for Cultural Anthropology and Society for Visual Anthropology. They’re excellent resources for thinking about how best to use the medium of digital video for knowledge creation and transmission.
One final note regarding conference registration: All paper presenters must be active members of the IVSA (i.e., membership dues paid in full at least through 15 July 2021) and also must register for the conference by 15 May 2021. The online registration system will go live no later than March 1, 2021. Our registration fees will be the same they’ve been for the past few years:
Group A
Standard Registration $190
Student Registration $100
Group B
Standard Registration $190
Student Registration $100
Group C
Standard Registration $100
Student Registration $80
If you are unsure which group you are in you can check using this dropdown:
We are very excited to be developing an innovative, exciting, and highly memorable virtual conference for IVSA members. As much as we all would love to be convening for an in-person conference, we’re eager to seize this moment as an opportunity to create an experience that is uniquely positioned to (a) capitalize on virtuality and (b) allow our conference proceedings to be more diverse and far-reaching than ever before. We hope you share our enthusiasm!
Peace and Love,
Greg Scott, IVSA President
