Workshop: Visual Methodologies for Public Participatory Work

This session will introduce visual methodologies and, in particular, digital visual research that makes use of online data and content to research social issues.

Recent contributions to digital visual research include the study of platform vernaculars, critical perspectives on the role of algorithms in sorting and ranking images, developments in machine vision and interpreting images with AI, and the rise of data feminism (incl. feminist data visualisation).

This talk will introduce the field, discuss recent developments, and address how visual methodologies could facilitate public participatory work. This theme of public participation will be central to the afternoon workshop, which will explore three visual methods in-depth, showcasing participatory projects and offering hands-on resources for those who would like to incorporate these methods in their research practice.

Dr. Sabine Niederer is Professor of Visual Methodologies and founder of the Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She is specialised in the cartography of issues and online debates through visual research, digital methods, and content analysis, with a particular interest in climate-related topics. In 2014, Sabine founded the Citizen Data Lab to build collaborations between researchers, issue professionals, local communities, artists, designers, students, and developers to work on participatory mappings of local issues. Sabine is also coordinator of the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam.