Academic Brochures or Celebrity Posters?

Academic brochures once foregrounded ideas. Today, they foreground faces.

When did scholarship become a visual spectacle—and what does it say about power, visibility, and expertise in academia?

When Ideas Need Faces: The Rise of Academic Visual Spectacle

This blog emerges from an unease I have been carrying for a while—one that crystallised only recently. It is about how the culture of digital visual spectacle has quietly but firmly entered academic spaces, especially in the post-pandemic world.

Most of us are familiar with academic brochures announcing seminars, conferences, invited lectures, and workshops. There was a time—not too long ago—when these brochures focused on the idea: the theme of the event, the names of invited scholars, their institutional affiliations, and the titles of their talks. That was the grammar of academic publicity.

But today, there is a new, almost unquestioned addition to this space of supposed intellectual deliberation: the photograph of the speaker.

Until a few days ago, this shift escaped my notice. Perhaps it escaped yours too. That is precisely how norms work—they slip in silently and begin to feel inevitable.

What Does a Photograph of an Academic Speaker Stand For?

What, exactly, does a photograph add to an academic conversation?

How does a speaker’s face enhance—or even relate to—the ideas they are invited to share?

I belong to a generation that was trained to believe that scholarship speaks through work, not through images. Back in 2018, when I coordinated a seminar titled Narrating Travel, Mapping Identities in my department, it was inaugurated by a senior and widely respected scholar. At no point did it occur to me—or to any of my colleagues—that his photograph needed to appear on the brochure. Nor did anyone suggest it.

The absence of the image felt natural then.

That changed recently, when a coordinator requested my photograph for a lecture brochure. The request itself was polite and routine. But it triggered a cascade of questions I could no longer ignore. I responded without hesitation: I do not see the purpose of having my photograph on an academic brochure.

What matters, I believe, is the work one does and the ideas one brings to a platform—not the face attached to them.

From Politics and Celebrity to Academia?

In politics, photographs are about visibility, recognition, and reinforcement. They work on memory and affect—on reminding voters who to trust, follow, or admire.

In celebrity culture, images function as publicity and marketing. Faces circulate endlessly to maintain relevance.

Importantly, neither of these phenomena began with social media. Banners, hoardings, posters—images have always been central to political and cinematic worlds.

But academia?

What exactly are we importing when we import these visual practices into academic life?

When I clearly stated that I did not want my photograph on the brochure, one of my hosts was visibly confused. After all, the other speakers were perfectly happy to follow what has now become a “new norm.”

From Scholarship to Self-Promotion?

We live in a time when brochures featuring our faces are shared as WhatsApp statuses, Facebook posts, and Instagram stories. This is often followed by a familiar ritual: public expressions of gratitude to the hosts, more photographs from the venue, more posts reaffirming participation.

Are we witnessing the emergence of academic advertising?

A visual economy where every lecture becomes a moment to be archived, broadcast, and added to one’s public persona?

Courtesy and gratitude matter. But must they be performed for an audience? A sincere thank-you spoken face-to-face, or even a personal message sent later, carries far more warmth than a public display of gratitude curated for visibility.

Or is this something hosts also now expect?

Is this also about signalling networks—who is connected to whom, who belongs where, who circulates within which coterie?

The Larger Question

At stake here is something deeper than brochures or photographs.

Are our academic spaces slowly transforming into power structures that rate expertise visually?

Are scholars being evaluated—subtly, silently—by how recognisable their faces are in digital circulation?

By the affiliations, friendships, and institutional clusters their images quietly declare?

If so, we must pause and ask:

What happens to ideas, dissent, and critical thought when visibility begins to matter more than substance?

And more importantly:

When did thinking start needing a face?