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Frameworks and Methods for Evaluating Visual Research
Language: English, French and Spanish
Over the past 20 years there has been a rapid rise in the development and use of visual methods to undertake research including the use of collage, digital storytelling, drawing, image analysis, mapping, photography, photovoice and participatory video, among others. These methods are becoming ubiquitous, particularly in social justice research and there is an assumption that visual methods, particularly participatory visual methods, are beneficial and allow researchers to access better data and challenge hierarchies of power. The methods are lauded as ‘emancipatory’, ‘empowering’, and a way to give ‘agency’ and ‘voice’ and encouraged as a means to produce and evidence ‘impactful’ research. To date however, critical evaluation of visual methods are rare and often limited to reflexive accounts of what researchers would, or should, do differently.
In order to help move visual research forward, this panel welcomes formal papers which move beyond accounts of critical reflection to present sample frameworks, methods and modes of evaluation through which the academy and participants might be more able to evaluate visual research. The panel will be followed by a facilitated workshop where participants will evaluate participatory visual methods developed and used in social justice research.
So that the discussions and learning from this session benefit the wider visual research community, the intention is to publish papers and discussions from it. To this end, submissions should not have been published elsewhere and full versions of accepted papers or extended abstracts (1000-2000 words with references) must be submitted by 1 June 2018 to ej.milne@coventry.ac.uk