Philosophical aspects of meaning-making in the contexts of image-making and visual arts
Anne Koskinen, Meisterschülerin, MA, MA, is a doctoral researcher in Aesthetics in the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts and Society, and a grant-funded researcher in the Department of Philosophy, History, and Arts at the University of Helsinki. She is also a member of the Comparing and Contrasting Languages and Cultures – CoCoLaC Research Community and the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ).
Her doctoral dissertation Zeitigung und Bilderzeugung: Philosophische Konzepte der Sinnstiftung für eine multimodale Werksästhetik will be publicly discussed with the permission of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Helsinki on 2 September 2026 at 13:00 in Lecture Hall 6 (B317) of the Metsätalo building on the City Centre Campus. The discussion will be in German. The dissertation is also available as an electronic publication and can be read on the University of Helsinki’s open repository Helda.
The focus areas of her research are situated at the intersection of philosophical aesthetics, image studies (Bildwissenschaft), multimodality research and german philology/linguistics from three perspectives:
Images/pictures
- The event of image formation
- Image-making and the pictorial constitution of meaning in the continuum of everyday life and art
- Research on the creation of pictures and art from the creator’s perspective
- Image studies and the philosophy of art as practised in art academies
Multimodality
- Multimodality in the domain visual arts
- Image-making as a multimodal event
- Speech acts and image acts
- Multimodal research approaches
Languages
- The use of natural languages in research and the visual arts
- German as a language of research and the arts
- Image Studies (Bildwissenschaft) and art philosophy
- Hermeneutics and phenomenology
At the same time, the relationship between language, thought and power is an important topic, without forgetting the concepts of intercultural and transgenerational communication.
Slide from Anne Koskinen’s presentation of her research at the conference Was die Gesellschaft bewegt – German Studies in Nordeuropa aus Sprache/Kultur, Politik und Geschichte, Helsinki, Finland, 5 May 2023
Fields of science
611 Philosophy (especially Aesthetics, Image Studies, Philosophy of Art)
6132 Visual arts and design (especially painting, drawing, sculpture, installation art, public art, AI, text to image)
6121 Languages (especially German Philology, Multimodality, Image Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics, Lexicology, Terminology, Contrastive Linguistics)
You can read more about my research here:
Koskinen, Anne 2026: Zeitigung und Bilderzeugung. Philosophische Konzepte der Sinnstiftung für eine multimodale Werkästhetik. Dissertation. Universität Helsinki. http://hdl.handle.net/10138/635181
Kuvaksi tulemisen tapahtuma – yleistajuinen kirjoitus tutkimuksen ja taiteellisen työskentelyn kysymyksenasetteluista
Research account on Instagram
“Images and pictures–what are they? On the linguistic challenges of philosophical image studies” by Anne Koskinen
“Mitä ihmeen kuvia? Muutama sana filosofisen kuvatutkimuksen haasteista” by Anne Koskinen on Instagram