Dorothe Bach is an associate director and professor at the Center for Teaching Excellence of the University of Virgina. Bach’s areas of research include equitable teaching practices, contemplative pedagogy, embodied cognition, course design, student-faculty partnerships and faculty learning communities.
Arnar B. Einarsson is a PhD student, philosophy teacher, and anthropologist. His research explores the theoretical links between C.G. Jung and Eugene Gendlin, focusing on Jung’s collective unconscious and Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit. He examines their shared grounding in phenomenology, the bridging role of Carl Rogers’ psychology, and how Gendlin incorporates Jung’s ideas into dream interpretation. More broadly, his work investigates how psychoanalytic concepts can connect Jung’s and Gendlin’s views of the body and embodied thinking.
Gunndís Ýr Finnbogadóttir is a visual artist and an associate professor at the Iceland University of the Arts, Department of Arts Education. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Iceland, School of Education, investigating environmental immersion and movement in thinking in an artistic research project aimed at developing environmental pedagogies.
Thomas Fuchs holds the Karl Jaspers professorship for philosophical foundations of psychiatry and is head of Phenomenological Pscychopathology and Psychotherapy at Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital. Fuchs’ areas of research include phenomenological philosophy and psychopathology, embodied and enactive cognitive science and interactive concepts of social cognition.
Pascal Frank is an assistant professor in Teaching and learning for the development and unfolding of human potential for sustainability at the Education and Learning Sciences group of Wageningen University & Research. Pascal’s research revolves around mindfulness practices, intrapersonal sustainability competences, and inner development goals.
Jie Gao is a PhD candidate at EPFL and ETH Zurich, where she leads a design-based research project on collaborative inquiry. Trained in social sciences, affective sciences, and microphenomenology, she applies diverse methods to co-create learning pathways that facilitate sense-making and emotional capability development. She works to help individuals and teams navigate complex issues and foster transdisciplinary learning across science, engineering, and the humanities.
Elsa Haraldsdóttir is a PhD student at the University of Iceland and a philosophy teacher. Her field of research includes critical thinking, embodied critical thinking, normative ethics and practical logic, philosophical dialogue, philosophy of education and teaching philosophy, societal impact of humanities, reason and artificial intelligence. Elsa also worked as the Project Manager for the Erasmus+ stragegic partnership project „Training Embodied Critical Thinking“ (TECT).
Katrin Heimann is an assistant professor at the Centre for Educational Develpment at Aarhus University. Heimann specializes in micro-phenomenology and her current research focuses on inclusion in learning and working environments in higher education.
Akira Ikemi is a professorat Kansai University Faculty of Health & Well-being and the Graduate School of Psychology. Ikemi’s research themes cover the practice of Focusing and he has contributed to the developments of various Focusing methods, including recent developments that incorporate mindfulness.
Urban Kordeš is a professor of cognitive science and first-person research at the University of Ljubljana Center for Cognitive Science. His research interests include in-depth empirical phenomenological research, neurophenomenology, collaborative knowledge creation and second-order cybernetics.
Kevin Krycka is the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Seattle. Krycka’s research focuses on social and political philosophy, philosophy of science and phenomenological psychology.
Monika Lindner is an educational scientist and a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education at the University of Iceland, where she researches the connection between embodied practices such as Focusing and Thinking at the Edge (TAE) in educational contexts. She has worked as a project manager in the field of intercultural continuing education and second language acquisition in Germany. She is a Focusing and TAE trainer (TIFI) and is familiar with Fractal Emotional Process Therapy (FEPT) and micro-phenomenology.
Julia Lockheart is Emeritus Professor. Her research explores visual narrative capture, languaging and collaborative writing as a tool for the creation and articulacy of new knowledge drawn from art and design practice. She is co-founder of DreamsID which is a performance-based art/science collaboration in which she paints the dreams of people who are participating. Julia is co-founding editor of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (Intellect) which is the published voice of the WritingPAD network (2002-present) for which she remains director. Until September 2025, she was Institute Manager of Research Degrees and Co-ordinator of Contextual Practices programme for Design at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD. She is currently a Postgraduate Research Supervisor within the Doctoral College at UWTSD.
Aston McCullough is an assistant professor at Northeastern University. McCullough’s research areas include- movement & health, motion analysis, dance behaviour. McCullough is a also contemporary/improvisational dancer and Focusing teacher.
Naohiko Mimura is a professor at Kansai University. Mimura’s core research expertise is the mind-body duality problem outlined in Husserl’s phenomenology and in particular in the “Theory of Experiencing” and the “Process Model” proposed by Eugene Gendlin. He currently leads the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Program.
Claire Petitmengin is professor emeritus at l’Institut Mines-Télécom Business School. She is the head of of the Micro-phenomenology Laboratory in Paris and has established micro- phenomenology as a new discipline to research the dynamics of lived experience and describe its fine- grained structures. Petitmengin is internationally known for her publications on epistemological conditions of this method, as well as its educational, therapeutic, artistic and contemplative applications.
Ghada Radwan holds a master’s degree in educational psychology and is the first registered female Focusing trainer (TIFI) in Palestine. She worked for over 20 years with local and international associations in Gaza in humanitarian coordination, supporting the resilience of cancer patients and research. She is currently a master’s student in International Studies in Education at the University of Iceland and a member of the „Freedom to Make Sense“ research project. She developed the „Olive Tree Program“ together with Mary Jennings, Tom Larkins, and Margarete Quinn, a resilience manual grounded on Focusing for improving resilience and life skills of Arabic speaking immigrants and communities.
Jenny Roche is an associate professor at the University of Limerick. Roche teaches artistic research methods at BA, MA and PhD level and does research through dance and related arts projects. She has undertaken training in micro-phenomenology and incorporates this approach into her teaching, scholarly and artistic practice.
Mike Sandbothe is a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena (Germany). Sandbothe works in the area of media philosophy and philosophical pragmatism. He is one of the founders of the German Network of Mindful Universities, (Achtsame Hochschulen).
Satoko Tokumaru is a professor at Kaichi International University, Japan. Tokumaru teaches TAE at Kaichi University, at Tokyo University and Sophia University Graduate School. In recent years, she has been developing TAE as a qualitative research method.
Siebrecht Vanhooren is a professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Vanhooren is a clinical psychologist and a humanistic, person-centered, focusing-oriented, and experiential-existential psychotherapist and supervisor.
Marieke van Vugt is an associate professor at the University of Groningen .Van Vugt is an an expert on the cognitive neuroscience of mind-wandering as well as mindfulness meditation. Dr. van Vugt is also involved in innovative research projects that include collaborations with dancers and Tibetan monks, in the intersection of art and mindfulness.
Jeanne Watson is a professor at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are centred in humanistic-experiential psychotherapy and she has an extensive background of process research methodology.
Marcus Weisen researches the lived experience of architecture in first and second person, using e.g. the micro-phenomenology interview, and designing from a place of embodied experience, knowledge, memory and imagination. He is a research associate with Gerphau (Groupe d’Études et de Recherche Philosophie Architecture Urbain), Paris.
Anna-Katharina Lenz is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Miami University of Ohio. She is also a Certified Focusing Professional and member of the Gendlin Research Center. Her research and practice sit at the intersection of inner work and entrepreneurial action — exploring what it truly means to build ventures, communities, and lives that flourish. She is especially drawn to entrepreneurship as a force for growth and transformation in contexts of inequality and informal economies, and brings embodiment-based practices, including Focusing and Thinking at the Edge, into course design, workshops, and communities of practice.
Collaborating Institutes and Projects
Mind & Life Europe (MLE) is a home for unconventional interdisciplinary encounters, where researchers and practitioners enrich one another in their understanding of mind and life, through the rigour of scientific inquiry, the openness of philosophical investigation, the edginess of artistic exploration, and the depth of contemplative wisdom traditions. We believe that holding an open-hearted and interdisciplinary space of dialogue is in itself a radical, ethical mode of being-in-the-world, which generates new pathways of research and collective sense-making with transformative potential.
The Eugene T. Gendlin Center For Research In Experiential Philosophy And Psychology consists of a distinguished group of academics in philosophy and psychology, all experts in Gendlin’s work as well as in their broader academic field. They meet monthly to further the purpose of promoting academy-level research based in the work of Gene Gendlin.
Training in Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding (TECTU) is an interdisciplinary European Erasmus+ training program initiated by philosophers, cognitive scientists, environmental designers, anthropologists, and sociologists, tailored for students, researchers, and professionals from all fields.
