Honing the Visual: Evolving Practices in Human Rights Work

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will bring together experts (academics, human rights practitioners, journalists, filmmakers, photographers and policy makers) to examine the interplay between visuals and human rights. It seeks to address how, under which circumstances, and to what ends visual imagery is becoming the central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The event will be accompanied by a curated presentation of OSF's Moving Wall photographs and supplemented with an edited volume.

Panels will address the following topics: 

Thursday January 28th: 1) Visual culture and transitional justice; (2) aerial photography and remote sensing in human rights work; and (3) evolving platforms for human rights documentation and advocacy. This day will conclude with a keynote address from the award-winning director Ra'anan Alexandrowicz on his project "47 Years of Documentation."

Friday January 29th: (4) Visuals and human rights law; and (5) eyewitness media and global crises reporting. The afternoon of the 29th will be dedicated to a verification workshop for eyewitness media with Claire Wardle, the co-founder of Eyewitness Media Hub and research director for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. 

The conference will be held in Annenberg Room 500, with a reception on January 28th in the Annenberg Plaza.

Please click here for the conference agenda.

A live stream of the conference will be accessible through this link 

(password: cgcs3901). Join the conversation on social media by following #VisualHumanRights. 

The conference is made possible by the Provost Interdisciplinary Seminar Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Social Policy and Practice, the Center for Global Communication Studies, the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication, Perry World House, Cinema Studies, camra@Penn, Comparative Literature, the Center for Media, Data & Society at the Central European University and the American Austrian Foundation.

The conference is made possible by the Provost Interdisciplinary Seminar Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication, the Center for Global Communication Studies, the School of Social Policy and Practice, Perry World House, Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature, the Center for Media, Data & Society at the Central European University and the American Austrian Foundation.