Registration
Registration for the 2026 International Association for Word and Image Studies / Association Internationale pour l’Etude des Rapports entre Texte et Image triennial conference, ‘Word, Image and Social Dynamics’, is now open.
To register and pay, you can use the online form here. The registration fee covers the cost of the full five-day programme, including some refreshments, a lunch each day, and an occasional ‘borrel’. If you believe you are entitled to a concession rate – junior scholars, those unemployed, and those retired – please email iawis2026[at]zohomail[dot]eu using the subject line ‘Concessions Rate’ to receive a discount code. Further, if you have any dietary requirements not listed or access requirements, please email us separately to stipulate these.
Please note, in order to fully complete registration, you will also need to become a member of IAWIS/AIERTI, which you can do so here. Memberships last between three and nine years, support the regular organisation of the Association, its triennial conference and the Max Nänny Prize, and include various other benefits.
Programme
The five-day programme will feature around 175 presentations, five keynote speakers, cultural activities, excursions and more. We expect to make this available to both registrants and the public by June. Please register or check back here for further details nearer in the coming weeks.
Registration
Registration for the 2026 International Association for Word and Image Studies / Association Internationale pour l’Etude des Rapports entre Texte et Image triennial conference, ‘Word, Image and Social Dynamics’, is now open.
To register and pay, you can use the online form here. The registration fee covers the cost of the full five-day programme, including some refreshments, a lunch each day, and an occasional ‘borrel’. If you believe you are entitled to a concession rate – junior scholars, those unemployed, and those retired – please email iawis2026[at]zohomail[dot]eu using the subject line ‘Concessions Rate’ to receive a discount code. Further, if you have any dietary requirements not listed or access requirements, please email us separately to stipulate these.
Please note, in order to fully complete registration, you will also need to become a member of IAWIS/AIERTI, which you can do so here. Memberships last between three and nine years, support the regular organisation of the Association, its triennial conference and the Max Nänny Prize, and include various other benefits.
Programme
The five-day programme will feature around 175 presentations, five keynote speakers, cultural activities, excursions and more. We expect to make this available to both registrants and the public by June. Please register or check back here for further details nearer in the coming weeks.
Word, Image and
Social Dynamics
24-28.08.2026
Abstract
Word and image relations and the institutions where these play out determine much of how societies (individuals and groups) define themselves. With this conference, we propose to explore how intermedial practices (inter- and/or transdisciplinary) impact on social dynamics, e.g. determine the ways in which art and activism operate and intersect and how art, literature, comics, film, digital media, theatre, etc. institute themselves in the public sphere or are entangled in power dynamics.
These relations can take many forms and engage us in thinking about the significance of society’s connection with various semiotic signs and in studying a variety of material that tends to fall outside of traditional boundaries. Therefore, we welcome historical and contemporary case studies and methodological explorations from artistic research, art history and theory, creative writing, literary studies, cultural studies, cultural analysis, film, theatre, comics or digital media studies, political science, museum studies, art sociology etc.
Questions that this conference aims to address include:
• the dynamic (power)relationships
between words and images and
their social impact
• the creative, activist and / or
transformative potential of this
interdisciplinary dialogue
• the institutions of word and
image (and experimental
institutionalism)
• intermedial activist art and
literature / digital
subjectivities
• the impact of word / images on
the situated reader / viewer
• historical perspectives on word
and image and this history’s
mediation today
• questions of (art) institutions,
display, and curating
• methodological questions arising
from hybrid cultural material in
the social domain
• indirect efficacies in / of word
and image in repressive
political contexts
• environmental activism in word
and image
• critical fabulation in word and
image
• word and image in counter-
forensis
• word, image, and the affordances
of their infrastructures
Abstract
Word and image relations and the institutions where these play out determine much of how societies (individuals and groups) define themselves. With this conference, we propose to explore how intermedial practices (inter- and/or transdisciplinary) impact on social dynamics, e.g. determine the ways in which art and activism operate and intersect and how art, literature, comics, film, digital media, theatre, etc. institute themselves in the public sphere or are entangled in power dynamics.
These relations can take many forms and engage us in thinking about the significance of society’s connection with various semiotic signs and in studying a variety of material that tends to fall outside of traditional boundaries. Therefore, we welcome historical and contemporary case studies and methodological explorations from artistic research, art history and theory, creative writing, literary studies, cultural studies, cultural analysis, film, theatre, comics or digital media studies, political science, museum studies, art sociology etc.
Questions that this conference aims to address include:
• the dynamic (power)relationships
between words and images and
their social impact
• the creative, activist and / or
transformative potential of this
interdisciplinary dialogue
• the institutions of word and
image (and experimental
institutionalism)
• intermedial activist art and
literature / digital
subjectivities
• the impact of word / images on
the situated reader / viewer
• historical perspectives on word
and image and this history’s
mediation today
• questions of (art) institutions,
display, and curating
• methodological questions arising
from hybrid cultural material in
the social domain
• indirect efficacies in / of word
and image in repressive
political contexts
• environmental activism in word
and image
• critical fabulation in word and
image
• word and image in counter-
forensis
• word, image, and the affordances
of their infrastructures
Word, Image and
Social Dynamics
24-28.08.2026