Call for Papers
We invite you to join us for the Eighteenth International Conference on The Image, the annual meeting of The Image Research Network, hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University, taking place in Toronto and online. This year, the conference is held alongside the annual meeting of the Communication & Media Studies Research Network, reflecting shared interests in visual communication, media cultures, and the forces shaping contemporary image ecologies.
The Eighteenth International Conference on The Image brings together scholars, artists, designers, technologists, curators, researchers, and cultural practitioners concerned with the nature and functions of images across diverse media, traditions, and interpretive communities. We welcome proposals that explore image-making as a cultural, political, aesthetic, and technological practice, and that investigate how images circulate, intervene, and acquire meaning within the infrastructures and publics of contemporary communication.
Special Focus and Themes
The special focus, Images After the Real: Synthetic Media, Networked Circulation, and Artificial Meaning, invites participants to examine how the status of images is being transformed by computational generation and platform circulation. Images increasingly emerge from pipelines that include AI models, templates, datasets, and algorithmic distribution—shifting how images are authored, verified, interpreted, and mobilized. The boundaries between capture and synthesis, documentary and fabrication, and image and interface are increasingly unstable. At the same time, images travel faster, mutate more readily, and gain force through networked publics: feeds, remixes, memes, and platform-native formats that shape attention, affect, and belief.
These conditions raise urgent questions. What becomes of realism, evidence, and credibility in an environment of synthetic media? How do images structure persuasion, identity, and belonging within platform ecologies? What new responsibilities emerge for artists, designers, journalists, educators, and institutions charged with verification, stewardship, and ethical practice? We welcome proposals that address images as artifacts and as systems—embedded in infrastructures of capture, generation, circulation, and reception—and that develop concepts and methods adequate to this evolving visual field
Sub-themes:
- Synthetic Images and the New Realism: Generative imagery, photorealism vs artifice, altered notions of representation, style, and the boundaries of “the photographic.”
- Authorship, Aesthetics, and Computational Creativity: Creative agency, remix cultures, prompt/interface aesthetics, attribution, and how tools shape visual form.
- Networked Circulation and Visual Publics: Platform-native images, memetic spread, attention and affect, image economies, community meaning-making, and political mobilization.
- Evidence, Ethics, and Visual Harm: Authenticity and provenance, deepfakes and verification, bias and stereotyping, surveillance/visibility, consent, and visual literacy.
Knowledge Experience and Format
The conference is organised as a hybrid knowledge experience, integrating in-person and online participation within a unified scholarly environment. All accepted proposals become Presentation Pages where presenters share abstracts and supporting media, and where delegates engage in discussion before, during, and after the event.
In-person sessions at Toronto Metropolitan University are interwoven with live online sessions and asynchronous contributions within a single integrated program. Regardless of participation mode, all delegates have access to the full schedule, session media, and a growing digital archive. Across formats, the emphasis is on reciprocal, human-scale exchange - conversation, reflection, and collaborative inquiry rather than one-way presentation.
Publication Pathways
Presenters are invited to further develop their conference work for possible publication in The International Journal of the Image, the peer-reviewed journal of the Network. Participants may also propose extended works for The Image Book Imprint, which publishes monographs and edited collections advancing research on visual culture, image practices, and the changing roles of images in contemporary life.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to submit a proposal and to join us - either in Toronto or online - for the Eighteenth International Conference on The Image. Together, we will examine how synthetic media, platform circulation, and artificial meaning are reshaping the image, and how critical, creative, and interdisciplinary approaches can help us respond to the visual conditions of the present.
Sincerely,
Stephen Sheps, Conference Committee, RTA School of Media (Sport Media), The Creative School, TMU, Canada
Joe Recupero, Conference Committee, RTA School of Media (Sport Media), The Creative School, TMU, Canada
AJ Cordeiro, Conference Committee, RTA School of Media (Media Production), The Creative School, TMU, Canada
Cátia Rijo, Research Network Chair, Lisbon Polytechnic, Portugal
Ana Maria Sedeño Valdellós, Research Network Chair (ES), Universidad de Málaga, España
Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Chief Social Scientist, Common Ground Research Networks, United States of America