University of Heidelberg

Images and media have been mediators and sources of transcultural encounters and entanglements for a long time and across national borders, and they do so increasingly in today's globalised world. Because various agents, institutions and objects, all contributing to the globalised imaginaries, have drawn upon different media for their legitimacy and other forms of power, the position of Visual and Media Anthropology will deal with the fine arts, popular visual culture as well as with mainstream or marginalized and subaltern media (e.g. indigenous media and their contexts). The chair hosts a broad spectrum of research based projects and teaching with respect to visual and audio-visual materials, e.g. advertising and gender; ethnographic and documentary film; urban youth culture, lifestyle and emotions or the global flow of 'local' art markets. 

Flows and asymmetries of images and media

In global and transcultural settings, images and media are prone to permanent changes. Therefore, the research focuses on images and media as ideal means to explore shifting asymmetries of cultural flows between Asia and Europe. These asymmetrical flows of visualities are produced, disseminated and consumed/received by social agents, and therefore require a closer, ethnographic look at the multiple layers of socio-cultural, historical, political, religious and ideological contexts and processes as well as localities from which they emerge and which they shape in turn.

Our core themes

To a large extent, the chair of Visual and Media Anthropology is based on a critical evaluation of media-related issues: whether this is connected to the ways governments, institutions, particular groups or individuals employ specific media in order to gain access to public opinion-making and legitimizing their interests, or to the ways in which certain images journey through various media technologies (traditional to electronic), across social, political and geographical boundaries, thereby changing their meaning and efficacy. The analysis of image itineraries and media flows also allows investigation into the ways in which communities have formed over time and according to culturally specific contexts, helping people negotiate and challenge perspectives regarding Self and Other, governance and civil society, health, heritage or space/place. Our key areas of research are youth culture, urban imaginaries, gender, diaspora and performance studies, as well as shifting art markets and exhibition practices.