Decolonizing the Visual: Community, Memory, and Resistance

#ICA26 Preconference | 4 June 2026 | Cape Town, South Africa

PDF version   ●   #CfP Deadline: 15 March 2026

Co-sponsored by: Activism, Communication and Social Justice Division; Communication History (CH) Division; Ethnicity and Race in Communication (ERIC) Division; Intercultural Communication Division; Philosophy, Theory and Critique (PTC) Division; Popular Media & Culture (PMC) Division; and Visual Communication Studies Division (VCSD)

Communication is a site where histories are written, contested, and reimagined. In a world where visual media circulates with unprecedented speed, the legacies of colonialism remain deeply embedded in how people, places, and struggles are represented, erased, and remembered. This preconference invites critical engagement with the project of decolonizing the visual—a task that calls not only for the interrogation of representational practices, but for the centering of community-based epistemologies, memory-making, and resistance in visual communication. (READ MORE)

In this preconference, we ask: How do communities deploy visuals to reclaim history, assert presence, and resist ongoing forms of visual coloniality? What methodologies can help scholars, artists, and activists engage in ethical, grounded, and justice-oriented visual research? And how might the Global South lead this epistemic reorientation? We welcome scholars, artists, activists, and community practitioners to help us rethink the politics of seeing, the infrastructures of memory, and the aesthetics of refusal.

We seek contributions that:

  • Examine how communities use visual practices to challenge colonial frameworks and reclaim narrative authority.
  • Explore the role of visuals in preserving and contesting cultural memory in contexts of erasure, conflict, and displacement.
  • Analyze visual activism, art, and journalism as forms of resistance, vernacular witnessing, and counter-archiving.
  • Critically engage with platform infrastructures, algorithms, and media logics that shape visibility, legibility, and exclusion.
  • Reflect on ethical and methodological approaches to decolonial visual research, including questions of consent, care, and community collaboration

Formats:

  • Traditional Research Presentations (extended abstracts, max 1,000 words)
  • Research Escalator (work-in-progress abstracts, max 500 words; mentees paired with mentors for feedback)
  • Interactive Roundtable on Decolonizing Visual Communication Methods and Practices

Submission Details:

  • Deadline: 15 March 2026 (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
  • Notification of Acceptance: March 26, 2026
  • Submission: ashley.stewart@uniport.edu.ng & tom.divon@mail.huji.ac.il
  • Abstracts should be anonymized for peer review.
  • Registration is by invitation to ensure thematic coherence and active participation.

Organisers: Dr. Ashley Ajumoke Stewart (University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria), Dr. Tom Divon (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Visual Communication Studies Division

VCSD @ #ICA25

Congratulations to our awardees at the Annual ICA Conference 2025 held at the Hyatt Regency (main conference venue) in Denver, CO, with the theme of Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research:

#ICA@75 #ICA25 #VCSD

Top Student Paper:
Pixels of Prejudice: Decoding Embedded Biases in AI-Generated News Imagery and their Implications for Visual Journalism—Toward an Algorithmic-Mediated Visual Framing by Menna Elhosary (City St George’s, University of London)

Top Faculty Paper:
Disrupting Inclusion: Seeing Disability in a Public Education Campaign by Kuansong Victor Zhuang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Outstanding Journal Article Award:
Landcare and landscapes and accidental beauty: failing digital technologies and the gaze of child researchers by Alexandra Lasczik, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Maia Osborn, Lisa Siegel, and Marianne Logan (Southern Cross University, Queensland, Australia) — published in the journal Visual Communication

Top Dissertation Award:
Military Power in an Information Battlefield: Revisiting the Role of Images in Human Rights Contexts by Anat Leshnick (Information Society Project at Yale Law School)

Rockstar Reviewer:
Manatalah Soliman (Edith Cowan University)