Interdisciplinary Symposium – From Looking to Seeing: Visual Literacy in Visual World

What does it mean to see in a world full of images, in the world defined by visibility?  We invite you to rethink the notion of the image in philosophy, education, the arts, and related fields of the humanities, and to join an international conversation on visual literacy and trace the shift from looking to seeing.   Today, we constantly look at screens, images, data – but do we know how and what to see? How do we make sense of the visual information? How do perception, attention, and interpretation shape knowledge, learning, and creativity? 

This symposium explores visual literacy as the capacity not only to read images but to engage with them critically, reflectively, and imaginatively. We aim to create a space for discussing how visuality influences our thinking, teaching, research, and cultural life.  

To focus the conversation, we propose three interconnected themes:  

– Perception and the Senses   

How do we move beyond passive observation to embodied, interpretive perception? How do we get from the aesthetic and/or sensory experience to learning, making sense and understanding?   

– Visual Culture and Literacy   

What does it mean to be visually literate in the 21st century? How do different art media, algorithms, and AI images shape our perception – to see, to create and to use visual material?  

– Learning to See Differently   

How does the education of humanities and arts help us to see through the visible – beyond cultures, disciplines, and identities in the globalised world?  

We invite:   

• Academic papers   
• Visual essays or performative lectures   
• Pedagogical or philosophical experiments   
• Dialogues and workshops   

This event is for:   

• PhD students, postdocs, and early-career researchers   
• Professors and supervisors   
• Educators, artists, theorists, designers, and practitioners in the humanities and arts   

Work-in-progress is welcome. The focus is on shared inquiry and creative engagement. For anyone interested in vision, meaning-making, and contemporary culture, we especially encourage interdisciplinary and cross-institutional contributions.   

For more information: Zane Ozola zane.ozola@lu.lv; Austra Avotiņa austra.avotina@lu.lv.

Please submit your proposal here by 15.03.2026. Approval till 22.03.2026.