Archived Image and Object Symposia

Image & Object Symposium: AI

Convened by Prof Charlene Villaseñor Black

Fri 15 May 2026

Cinema, The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre For the Humanities

This year’s Image and Object Symposium brings together artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines to think about Art and AI. How does AI change our understanding of originality, creativity, and the role of the artist? How is AI impacting current contemporary artistic practice today? Can AI create art?

Speakers include the co-creator of the artist robot Ai-Da; an artist whose work engages AI and social justice; and scholars who think about the ethics of AI-generated images; the limits of AI and its current ability to solve visual problems; surveillance, faciality and AI; as well as AI in contemporary artistic practice. The symposium will include short presentations, audience Q&A, and two short videos, featuring AI-Da and artist Christie Neptune’s Light Years Apart (2021-2025), an interactive mediated performance.

Speakers:

Aidan Meller

Christie Neptune (Ruskin)

Federica Fedorczyk (Institute for Ethics in AI)

Prof Bernie Hogan (Oxford Internet Institute)

Lawrence Alexander (Ruskin)

Lucy Bradnock (Courtauld Institute of Art)

Image & Object Symposium: Reproduction

Convened by Prof Geraldine Johnson

Thu 26 June 2025

Department of History of Art, Littlegate House

A study day on the theme of 'Reproduction', followed by a handling session in the History of Art Visual Resources Centre, Department of History of Art, Littlegate House.

Speakers:

Prof Geoffrey Batchen (History of Art)

Prof Geraldine Johnson (History of Art)

Dr Vibe Nielsen (University of Copenhagen)

Dr Brigid von Preussen (History of Art)

Dr Paul Taylor (The Warburg Institute)

Image & Object Symposium: Agency

Convened by Prof Marko Ilić

Fri 24 May 2024

Raptakos Seminar Room, St Catherine’s College

Agency is everywhere. How we make decisions and enact them in the world has been the subject of countless philosophical works, while the relationship between individual capacities and wider social structures remains a foundational concern in sociology. In recent years, a growing number of theorists have shifted their attention to non-human agents, while the global drift towards right-wing populism has placed the agencies of political actors at the forefront of public debate. At the same time, unprecedented advances in AI have cast doubt on the future of human agency itself, dividing opinion about how much control people will retain over essential decision-making with the accelerated spread of new technological systems. 

Drawing on these issues, this year’s Image & Object symposium invites speakers from across the University of Oxford to give a short talk about a particular image or object that for them raises questions around the theme of agency. Hosted by the History of Art Department, the event will bring together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to discuss what agency means to them, and to reflect on what significance the concept might have for the world today.

Speakers:

Prof Ben Bollig (Modern Languages): 'Filming Agency in Incarceration. Objects and Images of Tenderness from Pedro Speroni’s Rancho'

Dr Sam Ritholtz (Politics): ’Grief Materialisms as Feminist Political Praxis in Colombia’

Dr Sneha Krishnan (Geography): ‘Photographing Necessitous Children in the Colony'

Dr Di Wang (History of Art): ‘Nourishing Pictures’

Justine Varga (Ruskin): ‘It’s Complicated: Photography and Agency’

Image & Object Symposium: Purity

Convened by Prof Cora Gilroy-Ware

Wed 25 May 2022

Rainolds Room, Corpus Christi

Purity is an illusion. No matter how hard we try, our thoughts, feelings and actions involve complex, unquantifiable mixtures. In the physical world too, very little can readily be described as “pure”. The pollution of the planet extends to the pollution of bodies. New-born babies feed on breastmilk containing substances intended to stop furnishings from catching on fire; there are pieces of plastic in our food and in our digestive tracts. Even in chemistry labs, 100% purity is extremely hard to achieve.

Yet we continue to cling to purity. Although the notions of racial purity that once dominated the discourse on human difference are now only defended by fringe few, ideological and cultural purity remain valuable ideas. Appropriation, with its connotations of hybridity and plurality, has become a dirty word. All the while, detox treatments and spiritual healing modalities promise purity as a pathway to happiness.

Hosted by the History of Art department, this year’s annual Image & Object Symposium will bring together four speakers from across the University of Oxford with different disciplinary backgrounds. Each will talk about a particular image or object that raises the multivalent question of purity, followed by a Q&A.

Speakers:

Dame Marina Warner (All Souls College)

Prof Meleisa Ono-George (Queen's College)

Dr Maryanne Saunders (Lincoln College)

Eleanor Tingle (St Peter's College)

Image and Object: At Home

For many years the History of Art Department has organized an interdisciplinary symposium engaging scholars across the University of Oxford for a day of talks about the role of images and material objects in their research. This year, while we all adjust to working and studying at home, we will hold Image and Object remotely, with brief presentations from academic staff about their ongoing work.

We’ve asked members of the History of Art Department to share brief, five-minute presentations on a single image, object, or idea. What questions does an image open for exploration? What is the role of the object in art historical inquiry? Encompassing case studies from book projects to examples that are ready-at-hand during lockdown—the images we hang on our walls and objects we display in our homes—these talks will reveal the range of approaches encompassed by the History of Art Department. Each week a new presentation will be posted online. We hope they share the diversity of interests within the History of Art Department and demonstrate how art history at Oxford continues despite current events.

- John Blakinger and Jennifer Johnson