Sarah Awad

Images and their mattering in a digitalized world

Sarah Awad

Aalborg University

In this talk, Sarah Awad examines how we use images to symbolically and materially act on the world, others, and ourselves, and how, in return, the images surrounding us shape our thoughts, emotions and memories. Drawing on examples from different social contexts and a variety of image

genres such as protest images, political campaigns, photojournalism, and social media memes, the talk will tackle the democratizing and polarizing potential of images for social and political action and address the question of: how and when do images matter and influence us psychologically, despite their abundance in today’s digital visual cultures?

Read more about the pre-conference workshop held by Sarah Awad prior the conference.

Bio: Sarah H. Awad is Associate Professor of sociocultural psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark.

She received her PhD in Cultural Psychology from Aalborg University and her M.Sc. in social and

cultural psychology from London School of Economics and Political Science. She studies

processes by which individuals make sense of change through visual and narrative tools and the

influence of visual culture on identity, collective memory and politics within a society. She has

coordinated different art facilitation programs and public service visual campaigns in cooperation

with the United Nations Development Program and the British Council. Her most recent books include Seeing Matters, Remembering as a cultural process, and Street Art of Resistance.