Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, Portugal
Images accompany us constantly, shaping how we remember the past and imagine the future. They are always cultural and social productions, capable of generating meaning through both the visible and the invisible. In a context of visual hyperstimulation — from surveillance screens to social networks, from maps to collective memories — the question is not only whether we see, but how we see, and what impressions, memories, and interpretations we bring to our understanding of the world: its inequalities, its senses of belonging, the ways in which power is (re)produced, and how meanings crystallize in the spaces we inhabit.
In a time marked by uncertainty, displacement, and fragmentation, visual methods offer us not only tools of observation but also of (re)connection — ways of understanding relationships, networks, and invisible flows that structure territories and modes of life often overlooked by traditional social science methods.
The Winter School “Imagined Territories: Visual Methods and Spatial Narratives” invites us to reflect on the image as both method and narrative — as a means of exploring how people imagine, inhabit, and transform space. Images fix time and make the absent present: they are windows into lived experiences, social tensions, and shared hopes. Over the course of two days, key theoretical and ethical aspects of visual methods will be discussed, alongside practical workshops in which participants will learn and deepen techniques for data collection and analysis.
This program brings together guests from diverse fields to think about and experiment with how territories can be observed, represented, and reinvented through visual methodologies and creative research practices. If, as Picasso said, “every image is a lie that tells the truth,” then our task is to learn to read those truths — to uncover what they reveal about our territories, our memories, and our ways of being together. To look, once again, not only to record the world but also to imagine new possible worlds.
Target audience: anyone (national or international) with an interest in the topics covered.
Fees:
- general admission (students included) – 55 euros
- reduced social fee* – 35 euros (*this fee is available for those who may find the General Admission Fee a barrier to participation)
Registration until December 31, using the form here.
For more information: isupphdclub@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn.
The Open Call with all the information is attached.
Croatian 
English