EVENT - Visual Culture Research: Access All Areas?

Attenborough Building, University of Leicester

15 June 2012

Confirmed Speakers:

• Tim Padfield, Copyright Officer for The National Archives 
• Garry Campbell, Head of Archive Services at the BBC

This symposium is presented by The Salon and IDeoGRAMS in association with the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester.

With the advent and proliferation of digital culture, humanities research has changed forever. In an age when the internet allows access to more and more visual material, much of which has been previously unavailable, academics have an increasingly rich seam of sources to tap into but, inevitably, questions must be asked about the ethics of using sources and research which fall outside the bounds of archives and institutions. At a time when such archives and institutions are also at risk of marginalisation and cuts in funding, should academics use material accessed outside these repositories without questioning its provenance? How may academics and curators negotiate this tension between utopian academic and cultural impulses and the ethical, financial and political constraints around visual culture research, copyright and access?

This one-day symposium will explore the use of visual material in academic research and some of the ethical issues that this raises in the digital age. To open up the dialogue beyond academia, speakers from a number of national repositories and archives have been invited to contribute their thoughts on how to improve shared knowledge and enable wider access to visual media through a variety of channels. 

This event is free to attend, but requires registration with Dr Anna Claydon at eac14@le.ac.uk.