Lund University

MA in Visual Culture

Programme overview

The international Master in Visual Culture is a two-year interdisciplinary programme focusing on understanding the vital importance of images and other visual expressions in past and present societies and cultures. In recognition of the complexity that images and pictures embody, we welcome students from different visual and aesthetical disciplines (Art History, Visual Anthropology, Design Studies, Film Studies, Musicology etc.) in order to create a broad programme that prepares students for research.

The Master’s programme offers students a unique combination of theoretical frameworks and analytical methods pertaining to a wide range of visual phenomena in today’s image-saturated society. Throughout the programme, students will learn to critically analyse and interpret a comprehensive flora of texts and images in order to question and discuss how visuality is shaped. Visuality here means the social construction of vision but also the visual construction of society. On the programme, visuality is studied from a critical and intermedial perspective. Aspects such as power, history, environment, social relations, gender and ethnicity are central.

Furthermore, the role of visual communication is analysed in art, science and in popular and mass media, when it comes to portraying and shaping the major issues of life and society. The programme covers a wide range of materials – design objects, architecture and urban environments; painting, photography and sculpture; film, video and television; social media – in various contexts, such as art, entertainment, the natural sciences and the political sector, in relation to topical issues like biomedicine, social justice, or climate change.