Aurora Hoel
Aurora Hoel (aka Aud Sissel Hoel) is Professor of Media Studies and Visual Culture in the Department of Art and Media studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, where she is also co-director of the strategic research area Ocean and Coast. She is co-leader, with Pasi Väliaho (University of Oslo), of the research project Visualizing the Deep Sea in the Age of Climate Change (2023-2027) funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), and co-leader, with Lukas Wilde (NTNU), of the AI Media research group.
Previously, Hoel was Vice Dean of Arts and Innovation at the Faculty of Humanities at NTNU (2021-2024). She has also held positions at other institutions, including as a Novo Nordisk Foundation Visiting Professor in Art & Art History at Aarhus University (2020), as a Professor of Media Aesthetics at the University of Oslo (2019-2020), and as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2015-2017). Beyond that, she is a former Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Stony Brook University, University of Copenhagen, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and École polytechnique (the latter two in Paris).
Hoel’s research explores the epistemic roles of images and technologies of vision, including photography, scientific instruments, medical imaging and visualization, and most recently, underwater robots and sensors. In addition to the Deep Sea project, she has initiated and headed several interdisciplinary research projects, most notably the MSCA project Styles of Objectivity: Agency, Alignment and Automation in Image-Guided Surgery (2015-2017) funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme and hosted by the Humboldt University. She was co-leader, with Anne Gjelsvik (NTNU), of Face of Terror: Understanding Terrorism from the Perspective of Critical Media Aesthetics (RCN, 2016-2021), and leader of the project Picturing the Brain: Perspectices on Neuroimaging (RCN, 2010-2014). Beyond that, she participated in the research projects Digitization and Diversity: Potentials and Challenges for Diversity in the Culture and Media Sector (RCN, 2015-2020), headed by Anne-Britt Gran (BI Norwegian Business School), and Photography in Culture (RCN, 2003-2009), headed by Peter Larsen (University of Bergen). Her contributions to the latter project included, among other things, an exhibition on 19th century police photography in collaboration with the National Museum of Justice.
An overarching goal that cuts across her various projects is to develop theories and conceptual frameworks that factor in the active dimension and relative agency of images and technologies. To this end, she is currently developing an operational aesthetics and epistemology.
Hoel has published widely in the overlapping fields of image theory, visual culture, media philosophy, and science studies. (2024)
- Links
- Academia.edu
- Profile on NTNU
- "Operative Images: Inroads to a New Paradigm of Media Theory", in Image – Action – Space: Situating the Screen in Visual Practice, eds. Luisa Feiersinger, Kathrin Friedrich, Moritz Queisner, De Gruyter, 2018, pp 11-27.
