Institute for the Study of Visual Cultures
Director: Rachael Langford
The Institute for the Study of Visual Cultures (IVC) was established in 2006 with the aid of SRIF funding as a centre of excellence within the Cardiff School of European Languages, Translation and Politics. It brings together research-based activities on:
- European and world film
- photography, video installation and other media
- text and image studies
- visual culture and ideology studies
The IVC has a suite of seminar rooms along with editing and archive facilities in 60 Park Place, and it hosts a regular seminar series ‘New Research in Visual Cultures’. Collected seminar papers are published regularly in the in-house journal New Readings. Further publication opportunities are available through the University of Wales series European Visual Cultures, edited by Dr Rachael Langford and Dr Margaret Topping.
The Institute has strong and developing links with external partners, including the European Centre for Photographic Research at the University of Wales Newport, The National Photography Agency in Wales, Ffotogallery, the National Museum in Cardiff, and the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies.
IVC staff also coordinate the teaching on visual culture in the MA European Studies and the MA Translation Studies based in the Cardiff School of European Languages, Translation and Politics.
Staff at the Institute would be most interested to discuss with prospective students proposals for postgraduate study by research in European film and visual cultures.
Current Research Projects
- Made in the GDR: Visual Culture in the Other Germany: a special issue of the peer-reviewed e-journal Glossen (Jan Berendse)
- The Ophelia Myth in German Literature and Culture (Ruth Owen)
- Personal Remembrance as Historical Memory: Eva Koch’s exploration of the dynamics of memory, identity and gendered space in her video and photography installations based on her mothers experience of the Spanish Civil War diaspora (Montserrat Lunati)
- Representing the Congo, 1876-1960: Amateur Imagery and Francophone Contexts (Rachael Langford)
- RMM Representing Migration and Mobility (Rachael Langford and Liz wren-Owens)
- Travellers in Search of Identity: The Italian Travel Narrative 1980-2005 (Liz Wren-Owens)
Selected forthcoming & recent events
- A Long History of Madness - January Travel Symposium (January 2012)
- Cultural Translation - call for papers (December 2009)
- Fractured Identities: Re-siting Hispanic Visual Cultures (July 2009)
- Hamlet - Reception in European Cultures (May 2009)
- Representing Mobility and Migration project workshops (April and June 2008)
- Made in the GDR - Visual Culture in the Other Germany (April 2008)
- IGRS regional seminar: Women and Travel (February 2008)
- The Lost Decade: The 1950s in European Economy, Society and Culture (July 2007)
- Histoire vue et vécue: Visual Cultures in Modern France (April 2007)
- Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s Proust (March 2006)