About

The Visual and Multimodal Forum is an outreach and teaching initiative of the UCL Centre for Multimodal Research, serving as a hub for researchers worldwide interested in multimodality. It provides a platform for dialogue and collaboration to advance visual and multimodal research across disciplines, with a particular focus on communication and learning.

It was established in 2008 by Sophia Diamantopoulou as a student-run forum for promoting visual and multimodal research methods. It has since been open to all research students and researchers within and beyond UCL. The informal and interactive sessions of the Forum involve:

  • Presentations of multimodal research projects
  • Sharing and analysing multimodal data from work in progress
  • Discussions on key concepts and methods
  • Issues of multimodal transcription
  • Reviewing and discussing new research articles in relation to participants’ data

In July 2020, the Forum partnered with Elisabetta Adami (University of Leeds) and Eva Insulander and Eva Svärdemo Åberg (Stockholm University) to develop Multimodality Talks, an online seminar series. The Forum continued its activities through UCL Centre for Multimodal Research until its closure in 2023. The subsequently developed UCL Network for Multimodal Research blog, created by Sophia Diamantopoulou, carried forward the activities of the Forum.

Since September 2023, this international series has been co-hosted by the UCL Visual and Multimodal Research Forum, the University of Leeds Multimodality@Leeds and Karolinska Institutet, Unit of Teaching and Learning.

The UCL Visual and Multimodal Research Forum and UCL Multimodality Talks Team have engaged postgraduate collaborators and co-chairs in organising and facilitating events. Below is a list of past and current contributors and their years of contribution:

  • Jiawei Ding, blog editor, volunteer team lead (PhD in Media and Cultural Studies & MA Applied Linguistics, UCL Institute of Education) – [2020-ongoing]
  • Karen Choi (MA Applied Linguistics, UCL Institute of Education) – [2022-ongoing]
  • Hogan Kwok (UCL Institute of Education) – [2023-ongoing]
  • Eszter Toth (UCL Institute of Education) – [2024-ongoing]
  • Mimoe Iigo (MA Applied Linguistics, UCL Institute of Education) – [2021-2023] 

This blog has been designed by George Mavrogonatos and maintained by the Forum team led by Jiawei Ding.