Breadcrumb

Karin Wagner

Professor

Aesthetics Unit
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Room number
E230B
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Karin Wagner

Professor in Art history and visual studies

Research

Since I received my Ph.D. degree in art history and visual studies in 2003 I have conducted research in the areas of photography, new media and visual communication.

With the help of a one-year grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (RJ Sabbatical) I will be able to write the book Packaging Design: Sustainability, Aesthetics and Social issues during 2025-2026.

I participated in the project Att skapa relationer genom det digitala museet: principer för kuraterat innehåll (To create relationsships through the digital museum: principle for curated content) funded by Riksantikvarieämbetet for 2022.

In the beginning of 2021, I received seed money for a project on the digitisation of herbaria, Dried and flattened - materiality and representation in digitised herbaria, which I am now working on continuously.

During 2020-2021 I had a sabbatical for writing a book in the one-year project From ASCII Art to Comic Sans: Typographic Imagination in Digital Culture. The book was published by the MIT Press in 2023.

During 2016-19 I took part in the project Conjuring up the Artist from the Archives: The Case of Ivar Arosenius, funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

In the project The (un)sustainable package (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Research Council 2009-2011) I have studied packaging design and how organic food is marketed with the help of packaging. The book with the same name as the project contains three in-depth studies on milk packaging, pharmaceutical packaging and luxury packaging. My contributions concern organic milk, the pharmaceutical rhetoric that is used to market some food and how the use of bag-in-box, PET-bottles and cartons for the packaging of wine has influenced the visual communication.

In a previous project, From celluloid to pixels: Network and ritual around mobile phone camera and e-cinema (the Swedish Research Council 2006-2008) I studied how people publish mobile phones photographs on the Internet and what pictorial conventions they use.

Teaching

I teach courses on all levels. I have developed the course Image analysis, a course aimed at both master students and doctoral students. Previously, I have taught courses on visualisation, digital film-making and interaction design. In addition to being a supervisor for doctoral students in art and visual culture, I have also been a mentor for doctoral students in digital representation at Chalmers and at the Valand Academy.

In the media

Forskartorget Bokmässan 26 September 2015 Den (o)hållbara förpackningen

SR Vetenskapsradion Forum 11 May 2015 Förpackningar ett outforskat kulturarv

Radio Skanstull 17 April 2014 Konst och internet

UR Samtiden En akademisk kvart, 3 March 2014, Den (o)hållbara förpackningen

SR Vetenskapsradion Forum, 30 April 2012 Från flaska till bag-in-box