Anke Coumans is professor Image in Context at Academy Minerva Groningen. Her professorship is part of the knowledge centre Arts and Society. The different ways in which artists can bring change in society are subject of study in this centre. In her professorship she is occupied with the following topics: the political role of the artist in society, photography as research, interculturality and the designer as change agent in social contexts. She is educated as film theoretician in Nijmegen and Paris and obtained a PhD in semiotics and the public image.