A Centre for Drones and Culture seminar talk (online)

Dr Elisa Serafinelli, Manchester Metropolitan University

This presentation examines the transformative role of drones as emerging visual technologies that reconfigure our perception, representation, and understanding of the world. Drones extend human vision by capturing perspectives that were previously inaccessible, offering novel ways of seeing that defamiliarise the familiar and reveal overlooked dimensions of landscapes, infrastructures, and social spaces. Drawing on research conducted through the AHRC Leadership Fellowship project Drones in Visual Culture: Developing a New Theory of Visual Mobile Communication, this work advances a critical framework for theorising drone visuals, interrogating the semiotics of aerial perspectives. Through analysis of users’ and developers’ perspectives, as well as visual case studies, this presentation explores how drone imagery generates new visual cultures and practices. It also reflects on the broader implications of drones for visual culture, emphasising their potential to disrupt existing visual regimes, and outlines future directions for scholarship on the social, cultural, and ethical life of drone visuals.


About the speaker:

Elisa Serafinelli is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University. She received her PhD in 2015 from the University of Hull (United Kingdom) in Media, Communication and Society with a research project titled Digital Life on Instagram: Social Communication of Photography, which was published by Emerald in 2018. She is the author, most recently, of Theorising Drones in Visual Culture: Views from the Blue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the editor of Drones in Society: New Visual Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).