The Visual Embodied Methodologies (VEM) network aims to create spaces of knowledge-exchange and research excellence around visual, embodied and art-based methodologies within, across and beyond Social Sciences. We believe that in using these methodologies lies the potential for co-produced forms of knowledge, opening possibilities to explore otherwise difficult to articulate issues.

The network, founded in 2019 by Dr Negar Elodie Behzadi and Professor Jelke Boesten, emerged within the Department of International Development. It has since expanded to span the Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy, and is co-coordinated by Professor Jelke Boesten, Professor Cathy McIlwaine (Geography) and Professor Rachel Kerr (War Studies).

Call for abstracts 2025

We are excited to expand our network and connect, showcase and discuss the work that colleagues do across our faculties with a workshop and network day in July 2025.

If you use creative, arts based or Visual and Embodied Methodologies in your research, and are keen to be part of this, please send us an abstract of your presentation, and the names of authors/researchers involved. We hope to select a diverse range of presentations

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Intersectional Gendered Violence (2023-2025)

In 2023, the VEM network was awarded a ESRC Methodologies award. The project will take place from 2023-2025, with the team focusing on different strands of intersectional gendered violence, and ways VEM can be used to address this.

• Professor Jelke Boesten’s research will focus on sexual harassment against and among young people. She will work with students at King’s to map what they understand as sexual harassment, what safe and unsafe spaces are, who might be most vulnerable and why. Alongside, a Just Futures project led by Science Gallery London, she will develop a parallel project with young people from South London.
• Professor Cathy McIlwaine will use VEM to work with Migrants in Action, using storytelling, photography, and film to explore resistance and activism among three generations of migrant women.
• Professor Rachel Kerr will draw on archival research to produce new visual understandings of conflict-related gendered trauma and pain, how this is expressed and understood and what meanings are attached to it in different contexts.
• Suzanne Hall will use the findings of these workstreams in policy labs to explore ways of shaping policy and influencing policy makers in their understanding of these issues.

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Sign up to our newsletter where we share updates from ‘Intersectional Gendered Violence’ and exciting events in 2025 including Film Screenings, Poetry readings and Performances.

Edition 5 (Dec 2024) - An overview of the first year of our project 'Intersectional Gendered Violence'. Learn how arts-based approaches can be used to understand & explore experiences of gendered violence, and forms of resistance by communities and individuals, from students to migrants across London - with podcasts, articles, and conversation’s with film producers.

Edition 6 (Feb 2025) - Reflections on who has the right to represent and relay people’s stories of violence. And explore how ‘empathy-driven solidarity’ is created, weaving connections among diverse women from countries in the Global South living in London.