Embodied Knowledge In the Age of AI: Visual and Participatory Approaches In Sociology of Education

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and data-driven knowledge systems is reshaping educational practices, academic labour and the production of knowledge itself. While AI creates new possibilities for access, efficiency and communication, it also risks reinforcing disembodied, decontextualised and increasingly standardised forms of knowing. At the same time, contemporary educational realities are shaped by overlapping crises, including widening inequalities, democratic erosion, environmental uncertainty and growing distrust in science and expertise.

In this context, sociology of education is called to critically examine not only what knowledge is produced, but also how knowledge is experienced, embodied and socially situated. This session explores how visual, participatory and experience-based methodologies can contribute to more critical, situated and socially engaged forms of educational knowledge in turbulent times.

The session invites contributions examining how students, educators and researchers make sense of crisis, inequality, exclusion, resistance and collective life through visual, creative and participatory practices. Particular attention is given to approaches that challenge dominant epistemologies and foreground lived experience, affect, embodiment and everyday social realities. Inspired by global, decolonial and Southern perspectives, the session seeks to foster dialogue between diverse educational contexts and epistemic traditions.

Topics may include AI and educational knowledge; visual sociology and visual pedagogies; participatory and arts-based methodologies; student voice and critical pedagogy; embodied dimensions of learning; epistemologies of the South; education, crisis and social justice.

By foregrounding alternative ways of seeing and researching education, the session aims to contribute to a global sociology capable of responding critically and creatively to contemporary turbulent times.