Looking at Images: A Researcher’s Guide

The project was devised and managed by Jane Birkin and Dr Rima Chahrour, a current and recently graduated PhD researcher respectively at Winchester School of Art, with support from Dr Sunil Manghani, Deputy Director of Doctoral Research at the School.

While there has been an explosion of interest in visual culture and imaging techniques over the last few decades (both within and beyond the arts and humanities), support and skills development for Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers remain relatively limited.

Training refers to visual methodologies, but often only to prompt caution in dealing with matters of copyright and ethics. What is missing is a more positive and challenging ‘picture’ of the image in and as research. Funded through the AHRC’s student-led award for skills development, and involving collaboration with researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, Looking at Images sought to consider afresh the development of skills in image-related research, prompting dialogue between and within the subject areas Art & Design and Media & Communication.

Workshop events, open to postgraduate and early career researchers, provided places for more than 70 participants from around the country to learn from each other’s experiences and those of the invited speakers; to discuss methodological issues; and to work collaboratively to produce the an electronic resource for future use.

The project culminated in a ‘Researcher’s Guide’ e-book, which was officially launched at the British Library. The e-book includes twenty entries from both established and early career researchers. But also, intended as a living book, the publication has been set-up to allow for ongoing submissions; its aim to continue to ‘imagine’ what image research might look like.

Find out more and view Looking at Images: A Researcher’s Guide.

See also Sunil Manghani’s Image Studies: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2013).