The IVSA is pleased to include the renowned International Urban Photography Summer School (iUPSS) summer school as part of its 40th Anniversary Activities. The summer school was previously run from Goldsmiths College for some eight years. It is now based at Four Corners Film and Photography Centre, in London’s thriving and diverse East End. The cost of the summer school is £1450 and for IVSA members, a discount of 10% applies, along with a further 10% discount for students and applicants receiving state benefits and pensions.

The programme will be of particular interest to artists, photographers, filmmakers, urban researchers, architects, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, urban planners, community development workers, teachers and lecturers, along with many others.

The summer school, scheduled to run from 17-28 August 2026, will also have a public exhibition at the Four Corners gallery, and this will be part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s Backyard Biennial.

For further information, see www.urbananalogue.com and to apply email: info@urbananalogue.com

“Tales of the Self-Replicating City” is a day-long workshop on how Hong Kong pictures itself. The city is full of its own reproductions, sometimes overtaking the actual thing they picture within the same field of view. We add to this constantly, every time we point a camera at the city ourselves. The workshop spends a day noticing how that works.

Accepted participants receive a welcome packet in advance with the topic, examples to look for, and logistics for the day. They spend the day photographing wherever they like in Hong Kong, on their own schedule, looking for spots where the city is picturing itself, and each shoots a 360-degree panorama at the spot they find most alive to this. We then meet at CityU’s School of Creative Media in the late afternoon over light food to share what we noticed and select four panoramas to take into the 360 theater. There, participants collaboratively edit the panoramas using photorealistic generative AI, adding what they wish was there or what they expect the city would produce next, given what they saw earlier in the day. We will finish around dinner time.

The workshop produces a printed zine that will be deposited in the Asia Art Archive’s zine collection, and the edited panoramas will also be available online for viewing afterward.

The fee for accepted participants is 330 HKD, which covers the workshop and includes a one-year IVSA membership at a discounted rate. Food and transport from each participant’s shooting location to CityU are covered (within reason). No prior experience needed.

The aim of this three-day workshop is to equip early-career researchers and young scholars working in South Asian contexts with critical methodological, ethical, and practical skills in visual research. This intensive three-day activity brings together leading scholars and practitioners in the field of visual research and South Asian studies to engage young researchers in methodological dialogue and practical skill development. This offers a unique opportunity to participate in field activities on Visualizing Delhi’s Syncretism: History & Heritage.

Participants will be asked to bring their working paper or idea for a research paper for feedback and inputs during the workshop. During the field-based activity in Delhi, participants will learn how to navigate the ethical complexities, cultural sensitivities, and creative potentials of visual methodologies used in social research.

Organized in collaboration with senior members of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), the workshop will focus on Methodological Challenges in South Asian Contexts, Ethical Dilemmas and Codes of Conduct in Visual Research, Practical Skill-Building in Visual Methods including photography, ethnographic film, visual storytelling, participatory video, etc. and publishing and disseminating visual research.

Call For Papers

Themes, guidelines and important dates

2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) as a truly international association. As part of the anniversary activities of IVSA, abstracts for working papers and posters are invited from scholars across the world whose research engages with visual methods, visual cultures, visual media, ethnographic film, photography, digital imagery, or visual storytelling in South and Southeast Asia.

We particularly welcome submissions from early-career researchers; doctoral and postdoctoral scholars; faculty members; filmmakers, visual practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers working with visual materials.

Submissions may relate to, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• collaborative and participatory visual methods;
• visual ethnography and documentary practice;
• photography and community memory;
• urban visuality and public culture;
• digital images, social media, and platform visibility;
• AI and the future of visual research;
• ethics, consent, and visual authorship;
• visuality, heritage, and place-making in South and Southeast Asia.

Submission Guidelines

Applicants should submit an abstract of 300–400 words for working papers/posters; a short bio-note of 100 words; institutional affiliation and contact details.

Selected participants will be invited to submit a working paper of 3,000–5,000 words in advance of the workshop. The workshop is designed to provide constructive feedback and mentorship on these works.

Important Dates

• Deadline for Abstract Submission: 15 June 2026
• Notification of Acceptance: 30 June 2026
• Deadline for Registration Fee Payment: 30 July 2026
• Submission of Working Papers: 15 August 2026
• Workshop Dates: 1–3 September

Submit your paper at the button below.

Submit Paper

Join us for this one-day workshop event on 3 June 2026 where you will hear about and experiment with different creative research methods such as quilt-making, model building and others. Meet visual sociologists Nirmal Puwar, Brenda Herbert, Phavine Phung and Anita Strasser and hear how they have applied these creative methods in their research before you get hands-on experience with these methods.

The day is divided into a morning and afternoon session with lunch in the middle (lunch will be provided). During each session, two facilitators will give a presentation about a creative research method they have applied in their work. Each presentation is followed by a workshop involving the presented method. These include model building, quilt-making and others. During the workshops, you will experiment with the methods and explore how you might use them for your own research. Sessions are then concluded with a feedback discussion.

The main aim of this workshop is to introduce you to a variety of creative research methods and for you to consider how you might want to use them in the future. Another aim is to explore and get hands-on experience with these methods in a supportive, sociable and pressure-free environment with time for discussion, making and sharing.

This event has been cancelled.

The IVSA (Visualista) Film Festival is a keynote event in the IVSA’s annual programme of activities. Our film festival, co-directed by Greg Scott and Michael Brown, will be held this year in Cardiff, June 19-21, 2026.

For our special anniversary year, we have extended the submission deadline for IVSA members only until March 31st, 2026.

To find out more about the festival and to submit your films please visit our FilmFreeway listing.

All submissions must be made through FilmFreeway.

IVSA members should use the extension waiver code: VFF2026Extension.

This is an international theoretical and practical event that seeks to explore, teach, and co-produce audiovisual methodologies applied to fieldwork in the Global South. It is conceived as a collaborative and educational residency program that integrates approaches from visual ethnography, practical research, participatory documentation, and contemporary visual sociology.

Program

Day 1 – University of Concepción
Nomadic Colloquium: Multimedia Research in the South American Anthropocene. Academic day with thematic panels and specialized debates on visual sociology, audiovisual field methodologies, and territorial studies.

Day 2 – Ruka Weliwen, Callaqui Community, Alto Biobío
30 Years of the Downing Archive: Memories of the River and its Caring Communities. Screening, review, and distribution of the audiovisual archive that documents the transnational intervention in the Pewenche territory during the construction of hydroelectric plants in Alto Biobío.

Day 3 – Pewenche Butalelbun Community, Alto Biobío
AM – Collaborative production of the documentary series MAWIDANTU. Fieldwork and audiovisual recording in different areas of the Pewenche transhumance network (routes, summer pastures, forests, domestic and community spaces). This activity is based on methodologies of visual sociology, collaborative research, and ethnographic filmmaking. PM – Closing community meeting between Transhumance Lab Residents and representatives of the Pewenche Living Museum community.

Details for submitting presentations and applying for the mobile residency will be published soon.

The workshop is a practice-based exploration of the meridian body-territory. It aims to deepen the links between perceptions and visual representations, focusing on relations between human and non-human inhabitants, especially plants.

It will give the opportunity for experimenting with creative methodologies for social research – practicing activities that mix photography, solar printing, emotional writing and collective design – and for discussing the role of contemporary visual researchers in society.

This workshop will combine the exploration of the historical part of the city of Cosenza, with the collective composition of an artwork, throughout an ecofeminist, biocentric and immersive approach.

Join us on May 4, 2026 for a hands-on workshop as we learn a critical analytic method that both deeps and expands understanding, Critical Collaborative Collaging. During the session, participants will create collages as multimodal counterstories that demonstrate critical analysis of dominant visual narratives.

Participants will be guided through multiple phases of analysis during the Critical Collaborative Collaging workshop. First, participants will identify and define a contemporary dominant visual narrative that they would like to challenge. Facilitators will use Visual Thinking Strategies to enhance and reinforce thinking. Participants will respond by curating image banks.  After an introduction to the CCC methodology, participants will use a range of provided art materials along with any they may have brought with them to create a visual counternarrative that talks back to the dominant visual narrative they identified. We will provide reflective prompts to help expand their critical analytic moves and deepen their insights about their topics.

Prompts will also be offered to help participants compose written text to accompany their visual counternarratives in a brief writing session. We will close the workshop with a gallery walk where participants display their reconstructed visuals and share about the ways their image creates a counternarrative to dominant visual understandings.

The Ethnographic Observation of Memorial Sites in Jeju: Jeju Island is a significant location of state violence and atrocities in the history of contemporary South Korea, where more than fourteen thousand civilians were officially confirmed to have been killed by the state’s law enforcement and military. The April 3rd Incident, aka the April 3^rd Uprising, occurred before and during the Korean War, as part of the ideological conflict that led to a notorious “hot” war during the Cold War. Since democratization, the South Korean government and Jeju’s provincial government have commemorated the event and honored the victims’ memory. The workshop participants will visit several memorial sites on Jeju and observe the landscapes of mourning, healing, and reconciliation. We will use cameras and walking methods with photos and/or videos.

Observing and Filming the Diving Gut Ritual in Haenwon-ri Fishing Village, Jeju: ‘Gut’ is a traditional shamanistic practice in Korea that is believed to connect the dead and the living. On Jeju Island, fishing villages perform diving gut rituals to mourn the victims of the April 3rd Incident. Haenyo, the professional women divers who go deep into the sea to collect abalones or sea cucumbers, are the main agents of these rituals. The IVSA South Korea Group has contacted a fishing village fraternity to see if they could visit the village and observe the ritual next year, and received a positive response. The workshop will visit Haengwon-ri village on April 19th.

• Lecture on Religious Rituals for Social Healing: The workshop will invite an ethnologist who has studied shamanism and rituals on Jeju Island to gain more contextual understanding of the social healing practices related to past atrocities.
• Ethics in Visual and Sensory Methods Training and Practices: As a pre-ethnography program, the workshop will feature a series of lectures on visual and sensory methods, along with ethical guidelines for participants, many of whom will be graduate students and early-career scholars.

A reception sponsored by the IVSA on the evening of Thursday 2^nd April is followed by 3 days of films, beginning at 1pm daily. Marked by its contemporary relevance and broad intellectual range, the objective of Ethnografilm is to promote the examination of cultures as well as social issues, describing “patterns of living” throughout the world to educate and entertain.

Ethnografilm is co-sponsored by the International Science Council (ISC), of which IVSA is a member. The festival celebrates the art and science of non-fiction filmmaking and promotes the field of video ethnography, serving as a showcase for work and forum for dialog between independent and academic documentary filmmakers.