Founded in 2010, The Image Research Network is brought together around a shared interest in the nature and function of image-making and images. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.

The Fourteenth International Conference on The Image calls for research addressing the following annual themes and special focus:

2023 Special Focus—Images Do Not Represent Us, They Create Us: The Image and its Transforming Power
Theme 1: The Form of the Image
Theme 2: Image Work
Theme 3: The Image in Society
We are interested in the following lines of investigation:

The foundations of our species-being and the narratives of species history are marked by imagery—the parietal, megalithic art and body art of first peoples, the iconography and symbology of religions, the graphic-representational roots of writing.
The image has several key properties, of interest to the participants in this research network.