Freedom to Make Sense: embodied, experiential and mindful research
Freedom to Make Sense research project (MakeSense project) brings together internationally leading scholars and scientists who are researching, developing and training methodologies that enact an embodied, experiential and mindful approach to research, in particular to the process of thinking in the context of research. MakeSense will be led by researchers at the University of Iceland (UoI) and the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA), making the intersection of mindfulness, philosophy, art and artistic research a point of departure for the research and the implementation of novel methodologies of embodied experiential inquiry and research.
Overall aim
The aim of Freedom to Make sense project is to establish a research and training center that connects mindful methods of philosophical and artistic practice to respond in depth to a multifaceted and rapidly growing crisis within and outside of academia which craves for new ways of thinking.
Connecting critical thinking, mindfulness and creative practices in order to engage transformative dimensions seldom harnessed together
- The dimension of logical thinking and differentiated-critical use of language
- The dimension of creative and embodied unfolding of subject-matters
- The dimension of mindful and skillful contact with lived experience
Responding to a crisis
Today, when attention is considered a resource which a digitalized economy is fighting over, and educational systems are required to boost digital skills on all levels, there is an important difference that calls for consideration: on the one hand, being carried away by digital possibilities, with no resultant gain and even direct harm in terms of mental health and personal, intellectual and emotional development; and, on the other hand, being carried forward by these possibilities on these levels. We, the MakeSense research team, believe that ignoring the embodied ground of cognition amounts to giving in to the first option. It implies carrying on with a one-sided attention to a disembodied understanding of the mind, a trend that goes back many centuries within Western thinking.
Higher Education, we believe, more than ever needs to create spaces and conditions that help students and future researchers learn to anchor their thinking in their actual experience of the world they live in and by. A primary step is to strengthen what embodied minds bring along: a unique experience of an interest, a perplexity, an intuition, a frustration, an excitement, a sense of being lost and stuck, a sense of grief or anxiety.
Long term aim
We aim to establish an online and onsite Freedom to Make Sense Research and Training Center based in Iceland beyond the granted period. The center will offer programs for embodied, experiential and mindful research, in particular to the process of thinking in the context of research. The program will offer courses for students, researchers, staff and professionals beyond academia, with webinars and summer schools in Iceland and Europe.
Research approach and questions
Joint practice is the unique core feature of the MakeSense project
Workpackages 1 and 2
WP 1 will develop a solid conceptual approach to an embodied epistemology implying body-environment interaction as the ground of meaning, reflexive care and novel methods, by drawing on feminist, phenomenological, pragmatist and environmental approaches.
The members of WP 1 will meet monthly to address the philosophical- theoretical and cognitive scientific challenges from different perspectives.
WP 2 will focus on feasible evaluation approaches, and on how to measure the effects of different training methods, and different entry points to lived, embodied experience, on mental capacities. WP 2 will contribute pilot studies.
Both teams will participate in the training modules. Both teams need each other to draw out the implications of their findings.
Hypothesis & Research Questions
Outcomes
MakeSense will function as the umbrella for:
- Five different training modules
- Accompanied by 5 online think tanks and pilot studies
- Weeklong on-site think tank meeting: joint practice, assessment of methods, discussing research approaches
- Production of MOOC
- Publications
The multidisciplinary team will learn different methods from each other, and test, reflect and establish feasible and relevant research approaches in the form of pilot studies.
Publications
Editors: Lenart Škof, Sashinungla, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir
Edited By Donata Schoeller, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir, Greg Walkerden
