The Centre offers a unique environment in which to undertake collaborative, cross-disciplinary and comparative research on visual subjects in the Hispanic and Lusophone world, Latin America and the Caribbean. Through the organization of lectures, film screenings, workshops and conferences, the Centre aims to foster and promote innovative debates in the history and theory of visual forms, both in the specific context of the Latin American and Iberian image-world and beyond.
The Centre’s work is closely associated with Birkbeck’s MA/MRes Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern Languages) and with the PhD programme in Iberian and Latin American Studies. We encourage interdisciplinary postgraduate research work within our staff members’ areas of expertise.
The Centre has been pioneering the exploration and mapping-out of visual studies. Members of staff are involved in research across a wide range of fields of expertise, from cultural geography, museum studies, native American visual forms and early modern art history and iconography to urban studies, film, photography, media and material culture studies.
Visit Latin America in Photography and Film: A Research Resource for a compilation of visual sources in the UK documenting Britain’s photographic and filmic engagement with Latin America from mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II; and Weaving Communities of Practice for the result of an AHRC-funded project on textiles, culture and identity in the Andes, including an Andean textile search facility.
Image credit @ Luciana Martins
