The research will consider the various ways in which space and the visual world have been conceptualized in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular focus on the links between space, lived experience and political power. Space is important in the fine arts (painting, sculpture, etc.) and is treated by a number of disciplines (sociology, geography, history, philosophy, mathematics, anthropology, etc.); as such it could be seen as party of the ‘connective tissue’ which links the various arts and humanities disciplines. Visual representation is an important aspect of all world cultures. The lectures and seminars on the visual will focus on the critique of the visual in contemporary Western art, and the increasing importance of photography as a record or document of society since the late nineteenth century.