Visual Trust-ERC Project

✨ We’re excited to share the poster for “Pomurile Mortului / The Trees of the Dead” (Mihai Andrei Leaha & Roger Canals, 2026)!
🎬 Shot in Romania, the film explores life, death, and mourning through the eyes of elderly women, following Easter traditions, funerals, and the hauntingly beautiful “Trees of the Dead” ritual, offering trees and food to the departed.
Huge thanks to Andrei Crișan for his amazing work in filming and editing this moving story.

📢 Visual Literacy in Adolescents

We’re excited to share the results of a pioneering survey on visual literacy among 12–16-year-olds in Catalonia! Conducted with Fundación Photographic Social Visual and the Visual Trust project, the presentation of results featured PI Roger Canals Vilageliu and doctoral researcher Amanda Bernal

Insights from the survey inform recommendations for teachers, schools, and public policy to foster critical, engaged citizenship.

🎥 Watch the full results:

Educació visual i adolescència: presentació de resultats d'una investigació pionera a Catalunya En aquesta nova edició de l'exposició a Barcelona, presentem la nostra investigació sobre educació visual i adolescència a Catalunya.Com...

📢 Call for Papers | EASA Poznań 2026 Conference
Our doctoral researcher, Francisco D. Cuyás, is convenor of Panel P108: Gods in/of the Machine: Technologies of Metahuman Presence and Communication at the upcoming EASA 2026 Conference in Poznań.
The panel invites contributions exploring how contemporary technologies mediate, produce, and transform experiences of metahuman presence, communication, and belief across diverse cultural contexts.
We warmly encourage scholars working on related themes to submit their proposals and join the conversation.

P108: Gods in/of the Machine: Technologies of Metahuman Presence and Communication This panel examines how technologies AI, robots and digital media intersect with religion, acting as spiritual agents, mediating metahuman presence and

🌍✨ We are happy to share the release of our new video “Farewell, Gaia!”, which documents the powering down of the Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade of extraordinary data collection for the European Space Agency (ESA).
Camera and direction: Erol (Postdoctoral Researcher, Visual Trust ERC Project)
Editing: Òscar Hidalgo
Research coordination: Roger Canals Vilageliu
With special thanks to the Gaia Team, the Gaia Collaboration, our colleagues at ESA, and all participants at the Gaia Passivation Event at ESOC.

Gaia spacecraft passivation The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data. Data that are now being used to unravel t...

El projecte Visual Trust, en col·laboració amb la Fundació Photographic Social Vision, presenta els resultats d’una investigació pionera a Catalunya: Educació visual i adolescència.
El proper 3 de desembre a les 18.30 h, a la Sala Mirador del CCCB

📢📚Don’t miss our latest publication! La càmera protectora?
Les càmeres de videovigilància amenacen profundament el principi de la reciprocitat visual, indispensable per a la vida pública by Canals.

La càmera protectora? Les càmeres de videovigilància amenacen profundament el principi de la reciprocitat visual, indispensable per a la vida pública.

📢 ¡Nueva publicación! / New publication alert!
No te pierdas Ensamblaje ecléctico del profesor Canals, publicado en el último número de Cultural Anthropology, dentro de la sección especial “Vocabulario para la experimentación etnográfica”.

Una contribución inspiradora sobre nuevas formas de experimentar en la práctica etnográfica.
👉

Ensamblaje ecléctico En el campo de la antropología, el concepto de experimentación se ha aplicado principalmente a las técnicas utilizadas durante el trabajo de camp...

Check out our latest article: “Anticipatory Images: Visual Depictions of the Not-Yet and the Politics of Temporality” https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437251360376

This piece explores how anticipatory images shape our understanding of the future, highlighting their sociocultural significance and their role as powerful analytical tools at the crossroads of media studies, anthropology, and social theory.

Anticipatory images: Visual depictions of the not-yet and the politics of temporality - Violeta Argudo-Portal, Roger Canals, 2025 Images and anticipatory logic are intertwined. Humans have granted images the power to visually anticipate the future, which is traceable to the Palaeolithic bu...

Visual AI Politics//Politics of Visual AI Graphic Recording - Digital Society Research Cluster As part of the 2025 Digital Politics Summer School, we held a roundtable discussion exploring Visual AI Politics//Politics of Visual AI. In case you missed it, you can watch the […]

✨As part of the 2025 Digital Politics Summer School, hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, and with the participation of PI Professor Roger Canals, the round tables gave rise to something truly creative and interactive!
🌍 The discussions have been captured in beautiful visual maps, highlighting the key concepts and insights shared by each of you as speakers.
🖼️ The graphic recording is now live on the Digital Society Blog. Don’t miss it!

Visual AI Politics//Politics of Visual AI Graphic Recording - Digital Society Research Cluster As part of the 2025 Digital Politics Summer School, we held a roundtable discussion exploring Visual AI Politics//Politics of Visual AI. In case you missed it, you can watch the […]