The Handbook of Visual Analysis

The Handbook of Visual Analysis is a rich methodological resource for students, academics, researchers and professionals interested in investigating the visual representation of socially significant issues.

The Handbook:

• Offers a wide-range of methods for visual analysis: content analysis, historical analysis, structuralist analysis, iconography, psychoanalysis, social semiotic analysis, film analysis and ethnomethodology
• Shows how each method can be applied for the purposes of specific research projects
• Exemplifies each approach through detailed analyses of a variety of data, including, newspaper images, family photos, drawings, art works and cartoons
• Includes examples from the authors′ own research and professional practice

The Handbook of Visual Analysis, which demonstrates the importance of visual data within the social sciences offers an essential guide to those working in a range of disciplines including: media and communication studies, sociology, anthropology, education, psychoanalysis, and health studies. 

Before becoming an academic, Theo van Leeuwen worked as a film and television producer, scriptwriter and director in his native Holland and in Australia.

He studied linguistics and semiotics at Macquarie and Sydney University and at the CETSAS in Paris.

He has worked at Macquarie University, the University of the Arts (London), and Cardiff University, and lectured at many other Universities throughout the world. He is now Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UTS.

He has written many books and articles on discourse analysis, visual communication and multimodality. His most recent book is Introducing Social Semiotics (Routledge, 2005) and he is currently working on Global Media Discourse, to be published with Routledge in 2007. He is also editor of the journal Visual Communication.



My research interests centre around three areas of specialization:

1) Research theory and methodologies: Visual and Multimodal research and and Video-based research
2) Technology mediated teaching and learning: notably its affect on classroom practices, and subject knowledge
3) Multimodal school based research: with a focus on urban schooling, identities, policy and curriculum

Recent research project areas include: the development of multimodal methods for researching digital data and environments, the effects of government technology initiatives on learning in the secondary school and the home, and the changing practices of teaching and learning in the classroom.