VISUAL: The Visual Politics of Recognition – Understanding the Role of Images in Recognition Encounters

Images are an important component of recognition between states: official photographs of high-level summit meetings, or images circulated by state representatives over Twitter, are used to visualise positive or negative interstate relationships that reflect, or challenge, established recognition dynamics. Despite the political importance of recognition, there are limited studies on the visual politics of this process in International Relations. 

The purpose of the VISUAL project is to take the field a step further through the development of an innovative and original typology for the visual politics of recognition. In VISUAL we have the unique opportunity to advance our knowledge of the role images play in global politics. Using a theoretically-driven, exploratory analytical methodology employing a mixed-methods approach, the project theorizes and conceptualises successful and failed recognition by situating images within a process we know is politically significant: EU, NATO and G7 summit meetings and the war in Ukraine. VISUAL also explores the role of gender in the visual politics of recognition, building on feminist visual methodology as part of the image analysis.

VISUAL addresses three main research questions across three sub- studies: 1) What are the visual modalities of recognition, successful and failed? 2) How are rival interpretations of recognition between the West, Ukraine and Russia visualised? 3) How are gender norms reproduced or challenged in images signifying successful or failed recognition?