On April 10th, 2019, CritiCC's member Laura Fernández gave a talk at the Department of Communication at Lund University, invited by the LUCASN, the Critical Animal Studies Network at Lund University (Sweden)

Title: Images that liberate. Animal liberation activism and strategic visual communication  

Abstract: The animal liberation movement, as other social justice movements, has historically used images of nonhuman animals to promote changes in the speciesist status quo. Activists have used images of nonhuman animals to show the society what the powerful animal exploitation industries actively hide; they have also used images to promote connections with nonhuman animals, to tell their stories and recognize their unique personality and agency. By using images of nonhuman animals, animal liberation activists question the society on their complicity with atrocity, while promoting alternative visual landscapes on how a world based on equal relations between species would look like. In this seminar, Laura presented her PhD Thesis work-in-progress, sharing some of the activist communication strategies more used by the movement. She explored the links between images and emotions, focusing especially on the use of violent images and the concept of moral shock. Laura introduced some of the main arguments resulting from the collaborative research on vegan-activists’ experiences with images to create a collective discussion about one of the biggest dilemma inside the animal liberation movement: how can we better use visuals and represent nonhuman animals to achieve animal liberation.