Visual Communication and Expertise – (Ph.D.)

At the beginning of the 21st century, visual communication and expertise is of key importance in all areas of life on a global scale. Digital technology has transformed traditional publication patterns; digital photography coupled with ubiquitous telecommunication networks has the potential to turn every bystander of an event into a “news photographer”, thereby creating a new kind of mobile multimedia lay journalism. Visuals elicit both cognitive and emotional reactions, oftentimes influencing decision-making and communication patterns. Contemporary artists embrace new media, integrating video, digital art, hard- and software, transforming technology into artwork that in turn influences the aesthetics of entertainment, advertising, and user interfaces. Software applications increasingly rely on visualization. The investigation of these complex interrelations of visual communication processes in a global setting is at the focus of the VisComX PhD Program.

The four main research areas are built upon the expertise in these four disciplinary fields, thus capturing the full visual process: 1. Visualization, 2. Perception, 3. Interpretation, 4. Evaluation.

The PhD program is an integral part of the VisComX Research Centre which was founded in 2009 at Jacobs University with the aim to promote collaborative visual research and understanding of pressing problems in the contemporary world by uniting aesthetic, cultural, historical, psychological, social scientific and technological experts. Sharing its research agenda with the Centre, the PhD program stands at the forefront of cutting-edge transdisciplinary research in the field of visual communication. It is a structured 3-year program. For researching the heightened complexity of visual communication processes, the PhD program draws upon an integrated, transdisciplinary approach combining and interrelating four core disciplines: communication science (including media studies) as nexus discipline is connected to art history, experimental psychology as well as computer science.