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Honored with the 2021 IVLA Research Award

08 Monday Nov 2021

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This year International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) annual conference (4-6 November 2021) came with a surprise to me – I received the IVLA Research Award! It was presented to me in recognition of my active involvement in outstanding research that furthers the cause of visual literacy and my achievement in advancing knowledge within the field.


As it stays in the award description, it is given only when merited, to members of the Association who are actively involved in on-going outstanding research that furthers the cause of visual literacy, who have achieved a substantial, record of scholarly publication, and who have significantly advanced knowledge within the field.

I am very honored with this recognition of my research work. It truly motivates me to continue with research and pedagogical projects related to visual literacy in a higher education context. I also hope that my hope institution, University of Jyväskylä, will finally acknowledge the importance of cross-disciplinary visual education and I will have a chance to develop this area further.

And here is some information from the press release about the award:

Joanna Kędra was nominated for the Research Award for her heavy involvement in bringing consistency to how the term visual literacy is used within scholarship and her ability to arrive at concrete goals for the field of visual literacy through her own scholarly work. Kędra’s visual literacy scholarship within the last three years has resulted in editing a special issue of the Journal of Visual Literacy and a forthcoming book on visual literacy in education. These are just two examples of Kędra’s accomplishments within the field of visual literacy but there are many more. Gary McLeod, Kędra’s nominator and Assistant Professor of Photomedia and Visual Design at the University of Tsukua, Japan wrote that Kędra’s work is, “vital for future generations to identify and manage visual bias regardless of whether they are ‘reading’ images, making them, or even thinking in terms of visuals. It is difficult to imagine the current picture of VL studies without her contributions”. Joanna Kędra is one of ten people to be awarded the Research Award since its inception in 1989.

We are hosting the IVLA 2022 conference in Jyväskylä!

05 Friday Nov 2021

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The 54th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) will be organized at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland on 10-12 August 2022. It will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with the MultiLEAP (Multiliteracies for social participation and learning across the life span) profiling area of the University of Jyväskylä.

I am in charge of chairing the Local Organizing Committee. The call will be out in January 2022. Here is an overview of the conference theme (from almost ready CFP):

Connecting & Sharing – Envisioning the Futures of Visual Literacy

The past two years of ongoing restrictions caused by the worldwide pandemic have shown the importance of the visual in the everyday. Our lives have become more visual than ever before – from intense visual-sharing practices with relatives and friends, video conferencing and online education, to the visual presence of pandemic contexts in cityscapes, artistic practices in local communities, media feeds including charts and graphs, and creation of remixed images as a commentary to the crises. It has become clear that we increasingly need visual literacy in terms of image creation, reception and visual thinking. Therefore, in these current unpredictable (visual) times, we aim for the impossible – to envision the futures of visual literacy.
We invite scholars, educators, students, and practitioners from all over the world to discuss theoretical insights and to share research, artistic, and educational practices around the concept of visual literacy and/or in dialogue with multimodality, multi-sensory experiences and multiliteracies. The concept of visual literacy has been used for over five decades in education, art, museum studies, information design, photography, and new literacies research, but currently we have reached the point when we need to (re)build and (re)discover the (new) connections between the variety of theories, disciplinary traditions and educational practices in visual literacy and beyond.

The view on the Jyväsjärvi Lake in the center of Jyväskylä with Ylistönrinne Campus in the background (photo source: Jyväskylän kaupunki promotional materials).

Today’s visual literacy is multisensory – notes from the IVLA 2019 conference

26 Saturday Oct 2019

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The IVLA conference in Leuven, Belgium (16-19 October 2019) started from a provocative, or even quite arrogant keynote by Brian Kennedy. He suggested that within the current condition of the visual, the IVLA should even consider changing its name! I don’t think it needs to go this far. Many papers presented during these two days have, indeed, indicated that the visual is currently understood more broadly – more as a (multi)sensory experience.

What is more, seeing does not only happen through our eyes. Instead, looking and seeing is fully embodied experience. I would like to know, however, where in our bodies we experience ‘seeing’?

Regarding the image, the act of seeing employs a number of senses as well as our (life) experience, knowledge, history, etc. However, what we see is not always ‘what’ and ‘how’ something is (as Nettie Boivin indicated in her paper). In another keynote, addressed by Alva Nöe, I noted a similar point: we do not achieve ‘seeing’ only by opening our eyes.

One of the most interesting initiatives toward development of visual literacy and reported at the conference is the “Power of Pictures” program in the UK. Charlotte Hacking, program leader, talked about the project that brings back picture books to primary education curriculum. The focus on visual literacy had positive impact on children’s literacy skills development. Elsewhere during the conference, it was also mentioned that children are naturally visually literate. This can be particularly observed in the drawing activities.

The conference provided me with a lot of inspiration, ideas for some new teaching activities as well as with more understanding where we are in terms of visual literacy theory and practice. I finally met people that I knew before only from online collaboration. Let’s see where this ‘embodied’ experience will lead me/us in terms of today’s and future visual literacy.