Principal Investigators
Guðbjörg Rannveig Jóhannesdóttir (Gugga) is an associate professor at Iceland University of the Arts’ department of arts education. Her research centers on environmental ethics, phenomenology and aesthetics. She is the author of Vá! Ritgerðir um fagurfræði náttúrunnar and has published articles and book chapters on landscape, beauty and sensuous knowledge. In her work she has approached the concepts of landscape and beauty from a phenomenological perspective, and discussed the meaning and values that are derived from aesthetic experiences of landscapes. Finding a place for such values in environmental decision-making has also been at the heart of her philosophical thinking and practice. Her current research within phenomenology and aesthetics focuses on human-environment / body-landscape relations and processes, and their role in human thinking and understanding. She has been an active member of the Embodied Critical Thinking (ECT) research team from 2017. She has training in Thinking at the Edge and is a certified Focusing professional. In her teaching at the IUA she has been developing ways to integrate ECT methods into research practices in art and education. She has been an active member of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology and the Nordic Society for Aesthetics, serving as the icelandic representative on the executive committees of both societies for the last years. Through Freedom to Make Sense she continues to focus on the relation between embodied practices of philosophical and artistic thinking and to explore the intimate relation between the felt and the aesthetic dimensions of experience.
Professor Donata Schoeller is the conceptual director of the project Freedom to Make Sense, the name of which originated during her philosophical conversations with Eugene Gendlin. She is a research professor in philosophy at the University of Iceland and serves as the academic director of the Erasmus + program Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding, in which partners from seven universities collaborate (trainingect.com). Recently, she has been nominated as an Honorary Professor at the University of Koblenz.
With her broad philosophical background in phenomenology, classical pragmatism, medieval philosophy, philosophy of language, and contemporary approaches to embodied cognition, Professor Schoeller has become a pioneer in the emerging approach of Embodied Critical Thinking. She is a leading expert on the philosophy of Eugene Gendlin (University of Chicago), as well as an expert on the philosophy of Meister Eckhart.
Alongside her theoretical work, she has undergone extensive training in Focusing, Thinking-at-the-Edge, Micro-phenomenology, and meditation practices. Based on her research and years of practical training, she developed Embodied Critical Thinking (TECT) in collaboration with Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir. In 2024, she added „understanding“ as a key element to the program, leading to the evolution of TECT into TECTU and a second round of funding by the European Erasmus+ program. Professor Schoeller is an internationally invited teacher who has fostered a vibrant and motivated community dedicated to the research and practice of embodied, experiential and mindful thinking.
See also Donata’s web page for further information.
Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (Sigga) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland and the principal investigator of the Freedom to Make Sense project, as well as the earlier Embodied Critical Thinking project. Sigga has published extensively on Nietzsche’s philosophy, feminist philosophy, the philosophy of the body and embodied thinking, environmental philosophy, the contributions of women in the history of philosophy, and transnational feminist philosophy (as one of the founders of the Gender Equality Studies and Training Programme under the auspices of UNESCO.) She serves as a board member and chair of the Committee on Gender Issues for FISP, the global organization of philosophical societies that sponsors the World Congress of Philosophy, held every five years. Sigga’s expertise in embodied philosophical thinking grew from her research into embodiment and gender, which she views as a practical application of the theoretical work she has pursued throughout her career. The methodologies of embodied critical thinking are central to her teaching in philosophy, training her students to think independently and creatively. Along with her partners in the Freedom to Make Sense project, she regards this as a breakthrough methodology for scientific, critical, and philosophical thinking, with broad implications for pedagogy and education at all levels.
Björn Þorsteinsson is professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland and one of the principal investigators of the Freedom to Make Sense project as well as of the earlier Embodied Critical Thinking project. He holds a PhD from Université Paris 8 (Vincennes-St. Denis) and works on the legacy of German Idealism and French 20th century philosophy. He is the author of La question de la justice chez Jacques Derrida (2007) and Verufræði (Ontology; 2022) and has contributed to volumes such as The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology and Blackwell’s Companion to Derrida, as well as numerous other books and journals. Beyond this, he has a wide range of publications in his native Icelandic, including translations by Rousseau, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Zahavi, Lazzarato, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Simone Weil, and Fink, as well as having done extensive editorial work for book series and journals.
Björn has been an active member of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology since its inauguration in 2001, serving on its Executive Committee for a total of twelve years. In recent years he has been engaged in international research projects such as Mobilities on the Margins (funded by the Icelandic Research Council 2020-23) and The Future of European Independent Arts Spaces in a Period of Socially Engaged Art (FEINART; funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of Horizon 2020 in the period 2019-24).
For Björn, The Freedom to Make Sense project constitutes a consummation of his earlier work due to its radical, thoughtful, and thoroughgoing attending to what it means to sense, what it means to participate in the ongoing making of sense, and what freedom could be(come) within this participatory sense-making.
See also Björn’s web page at the University of Iceland.
Kristín Valsdóttir (kristin@lhi.is) is an associate professor at Iceland University of the Arts (IUA) Department of Arts Education and a programme director for music education and arts and well-being. With her background in the pedagogy of music and movement (from the University of Iceland and Orff Institut, Mozarteum, Salzburg), she has worked as a music teacher in public- and music schools and founded and directed the Reykjavik Cathedral children- and youth choir. She has extensive, comprehensive teaching experience at the university level as a lecturer and full-time teacher at the University of Iceland and a choir conductor and music teacher for drama students at IUA. She held the position of head of the Department of Arts Education from 2009, when the department was founded, until 2024. She played a significant role in building a master’s program in pedagogy for artists at the IUA.
Kristín Valsdóttir has led an Erasmus+ project on Social Inclusion and Well-being through the Arts with five European Universities. This project has resulted in the development of a new master’s program at IUA focusing on arts and well-being. Her research, which centres on music education, artistic practices, and the influence of arts on well-being, has significantly contributed to the field of arts education. Her PhD work was particularly focused on curriculum design, reflective practices in teacher training for artists, and the learning culture in higher education.
Greg Walkerden is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Macquarie University. Walkerden is an expert in environmental management and felt understanding centred reflective practice.
His research roots are in philosophy and psychology, and he draws particularly on Eugene Gendlin’s Philosophy of the Implicit. His research focus is developing new kinds of practice, in four main areas: exploring kinds of grounding (particularly in felt understanding, and an underlying sense of oneness), platform skills (e.g. conversation and negotiation), environmental management (e.g. heuristics and professional sensibilities), and practice research methods. (Modes of grounding underpin platform skills which in turn underpin particular areas of practice like environmental management; his research methods work supports research in each of these three layers of practice tradition R&D.) He is also exploring ways of characterising animal practices. His practice roots include senior management roles in IT and environmental management, extensive experience facilitating, and practice in somatics, and Christian and Buddhist practice.
He is co-editor of ‘Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning , and co-author of Reflection for learning: a scholarly practice guide for educators.
See also Greg’s web page at the Macquarie University.
Ólafur Páll Jónsson is a professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland’s School of Education, faculty of education and diversity. He works on philosophy of education, theories of democracy and social justice and philosophy of nature.
See also Ólafur’s webpage.
Project Managers
Sólrún Una Þorláksdóttir (Una) is a philosophy teacher in Reykjavík. She has an MA in Aesthetics and a BA in philosophy from Uppsala University as well as a diploma in Upper Secondary School Teaching from the University of Iceland. Among Una’s research interest are aesthetic value, the ethics of nature and place and phenomenology of sound and music. As a project manager for Freedom to Make Sense, her main role is to ensure the smooth running of the project and take care of beaurocratical aspects such as annual reports to Rannís, the Icelandic Research Fund.
Monika Catarina Lindner, Dipl.-Päd. Univ. (monika@hi.is) is an educational scientist with a focus on intercultural learning and Second Language Acquisition (SAQ) in adult education.
It is Monika’s pleasure to support creative and innovative developments and to integrate Focusing and TAE into various areas of work and life.
She is a certified Focusing Trainer (TIFI, Focusing España) and currently a Coordinator in Training (CiT). As an Experiential Concept Coach/Trainer (ECC) she specializes in teaching „Thinking At the Edge“ (TAE). She is part of the german speaking trainer network Focusing Netzwerk (FN) which realizes a yearly Focusing Summer Week at Humboldthaus/Achberg/Germany. Monika is a member of the Membership Committee (TIFI).
See also Lindner’s web page for further information.
