Doctoral Research Project – Supervised at Royal Roads University
Images Into Action is a participatory doctoral research project at Royal Roads University. The project examines how youth frame climate change and climate action through visual storytelling as a means of fostering engagement, critical consciousness, and action. Youth collaborators act as research partners by co-designing activities, contributing to the thematic analysis of images, and shaping visual stories that communicate youth-identified climate issues, solutions, and actions.
What is Images Into Action?
Images Into Action brings young people together to explore climate engagement, empowerment, and communication through photography and storytelling. Youth shape the research by identifying the topics that matter most to them, analyzing and interpreting the image collection, and building a visual story deck grounded in their perspectives and experiences. At its heart, the project creates space for youth to collaborate as research partners, reflecting on what climate change means to them and developing visual stories that highlight the issues, solutions, and actions they believe are most important.
The research is led by Mark Altermann, a doctoral student at Royal Roads University, supervised by Dr. Robin Cox, Director of the Resilience by Design Lab. The project is co-led by a Youth Research Advisory Group—volunteer youth aged 15–25 who help shape the research process and its outcomes.
Key aspects of project participation are:
Co-create Knowledge: Youth help decide on image topics, outreach strategies, thematic analysis, and the criteria used to build the image deck.
Make sense: Learn visual analysis methods and connect images to local and broader climate issues, solutions, and actions.
Tell stories: Draw on lived experience and local knowledge to develop captions and short narratives for selected images.
Share impact: Contribute to a visual story deck designed to educate, explore, and spark conversation.
Lead and inspire: Take part in shaping research that amplifies youth voices and inspires greater climate awareness and action.
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To keep up with this project, please check out the project update page.