Visual Studies in and on Southeastern Europe. Introduction

Over the past few decades, visual studies have emerged as a vibrant interdisciplinary field, deeply influenced by the media and technological revolutions of recent years. The latest volume of Ethnologia Balkanica, published for the first time in an online format as a guest issue in Contemporary Southeastern Europe (CSE), focuses on visual culture within Southeastern Europe. This issue explores the role of visual media (ranging from photography to film and documentary) in shaping and reflecting questions of power, representation, gender, identity, and memory in Southeast Europe. The focus is specifically on images—both static and moving—with attention divided between their representational power (content analysis) and broader considerations such as their materiality, social biographies, and the ways in which they function as carriers of memory. Despite the growing prominence of visual studies, Southeast European scholarship has often lagged in fully embracing visual methodologies, still relying heavily on textual sources. This issue aims to bridge that gap, offering diverse perspectives on how visual culture informs the understanding of identity, history, and power in the region.

Robert Pichler

Robert Pichler


Robert Pichler is Head of the Research Group Historical Anthropology at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). His research focuses on migration and mobility, family and kinship, social and political transformations, nation-building, and visual culture in Southeastern Europe, with a particular focus on Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. He is Head of the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology (InASEA) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Ethnologia Balkanica. His research also includes visual and photographic work, combining historical-anthropological research with documentary and artistic approaches.
 


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