Our social, cultural and political worlds have always been visual, and shaped by media technologies, old and new. Visual and Media Studies is devoted to the historically-informed critical study of visual and media practices in their rich diversity, from popular media (advertising, photography, television, film and video, new media and games) to professional contexts (the courtroom, the hospital, the gallery, the classroom). Gaining critical understanding of these complex and rapidly evolving contexts requires the integration of theory and practice (or creative thought and critical making) and the development of a repertoire of twenty-first century competencies in research and art, theory, historiography, argumentation, analysis, computation, and multimedia storytelling.