Visualizing Science and Environment

Symposium organised by the Science and Environment Communication Section, ECREA, in association with the Media Research Group, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Brighton, UK

Venue: University of Brighton, UK, 17-18 November 2011

From the DNA double helix, to climate model simulations, to media footage of environmental protest, images play a central role in the construction and communication of scientific and environmental matters. However, the visual dimensions of science and environment communication are often overlooked in research.  What forms of knowledge and understanding do images produce, facilitate and/or constrain when it comes to issues of science and the environment? How are the visual dimensions of science and environmental communication approached differently across diverse fields such as the physical sciences, the social sciences and the humanities? This symposium will explore the visual dimensions of science and environmental communication by addressing questions of knowledge, understanding, practice and power, through the visual.

We invite formal papers and creative contributions (such as artwork and short performances) from academics and practitioners that examine the role of the visual in the construction and communication of science and the environment. We welcome work from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, from the natural sciences to the social sciences and creative arts. Of particular interest is work that involves collaboration and dialogue across different areas, such as art and science, or academia and civil society groups.

Topics for exploration may include, but are not restricted to, the following:
•	The visual representation of environmental problems – by the media, NGOs, corporations, citizens 
                and/or activists 
•	Visual representations of environmental activism and the use of the visual by activists
•	Filmic/televisual/creative arts engagements with science and the environment
•	Visual construction of science, medicine and the medicalised body
•	Image selection criteria used by news and website editors to represent science and environmental issues
•	The interplay of visual representations with verbal/aural codes in science and environment communication
•	The characteristics of visual representation of science and the environment in digital media and their  
                exploration by multiple users
•	The influence of visual elements on the process of reading multimodal messages about science and the          
                environment
•	Public responses to different forms of visualizing science and the environment
•	Creative dialogues across disciplines as a means of creating new ways of visualising science and the
                 environment

Please send a 200 word abstract to Julie Doyle [log in to unmask], Anabela Carvalho [log in to unmask] and Louise Phillips [log in to unmask] by 30 June 2011

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