The Body, the Great Forgotten? – Exploring Embodied Epistemologies

May 29-31, 2025

Andrea Mathez, UNIL

Soufiane Guerraoui, Théâtre de Compiègne

Leila Chakroun, iAssociate researcher at LADYSS, Université Paris Cité

Lise Landrin, Institute of Geography, UNIBE

« Le corps n'est ni une chose ni une somme d'organes, mais un réseau de liens, ouvert au monde et aux autres. Le monde est le lieu où se nouent la corporéité et l'altérité. » Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"The way we inhabit our bodies influences our thinking." Claire Marine

The persistent myth of a disembodied independent analytical mind is increasingly challenged in anthropology and geography research. Yu-Fu Tuan (1977) discussed already forty years ago how emotions tint all human experience, including high flights of thought. Csordas (1990) reflects on how embodiment challenges some of the dualities (mind-body, self-other, cognition-emotion, subjectivity-objectivity) that underlie much of anthropological thought. Kleinman and Copp (1993) criticise how emotions are considered as suspect in fieldwork, contaminating research by impeding objectivity and therefore to be removed. Davies and Spencer (2010) looking at the psychology and anthropology of fieldwork experience, explore how methods do not purify subjectivity, but mould subjectivity not into patterns that efface all emotion but into ones that produce emotions of a different order. They criticise the attitudes prone to privilege learning as a purely cognitive process in social research. Yet, they advance no practical tools to reverse these attitudes. Moreover, the feminist scholar Ahmed (2014) discusses the cultural politics of emotions and bodies. The Political Ecology Conference in 2022, Emotional Political Ecologies - Methods, Insights and Potential, explored how embodied research accounts can open up new possibilities, whether for imagining new types of 'human-non-human' relationships or for theorising power and resistance more deeply.

After years of neglecting the body in research, a shift has been beginning to take place that recognises the centrality of our bodies, emotions and sensations as researchers. Yet, while there are some tools (cf. Somatics Toolkit for Ethnographers), there is a scarcity of time to think and experiment with what this really means. Rather than approaching the body-mind connection once again on a purely intellectual level and with a purely cognitive learning process, this module proposes an immersive, participatory and experimental approach combining physical and intellectual exploration.

In this workshop, participants will be led to explore different dimensions of their bodies (movement, senses and sensations, emotions, speech and silence, play and interaction) through an introduction into improvisation and body theatre techniques. This exploration aims to: i) (re)discover the simplicity and power of a conscious body in the formulation of thought, creation of ideas and in the understanding and interaction with one's environment and to ii) provide and experiment with tools to accompany the theoretical inquiry. 

Furthermore, through different reflexive and theoretical moments participants will be guided in the inquiry of what it means to be an "embodied researcher" for our epistemologies. Namely through collective reading cercles, discussions, theoretical inputs on the politics and emotions of bodies and the heuristic interactions of mind and body in research.

Participants in this workshop will be asked in advance: 

1) To send us a reading which inspired you in (re)thinking: 

• the politics and emotions of bodies or 

• the heuristic interactions of mind and body in their research 

and to choose a section no longer than 2 pages which we will integrate into a collective reading booklet. 

2) To prepare a text answering one or several of these questions with regard to how you account for your body in note taking, data collection, analysis and writing up: 

• What do you do with the information you sense through your body in note taking, data collection, analysis and writing up? 

• What bodily impressions helped you to understand your research/field? And how do you account for them in the writing process? 

• How did your emotions play a part in the data collection and analysis of your research? And how do you account for them in the writing process? 

• What feelings do you accept or not/where do you 'self-police' yourself according to what you consider the correct feelings/correct relations with your 'research participants'? And what does this reveal about yourself and your research context? 

• How is your body affected in the field (i.e., other diet, other physical activity, temperature and landscapes) and what does this mean for your research? 

• When do you feel betrayed by your body during the research process/ethnographic fieldwork? 

è You do not need to have a solution to these questions, you may also write about your difficulties in dealing with the issues these questions raise… 

Invited experts:

Soufiane Guerraoui is a Moroccan and French physical actor, theater improviser, director, writer, and instructor. Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School was a fundamental turning point in his approach to creation and the beginning of a personal research on the link between body, space and movement. Constantly striving to deepen his understanding of the body in movement, Soufiane is also a qualified Kundalini Yoga teacher. Passionate about transmission, Soufiane has developed an approach to help people improve their physical and oral ease and power, through movement theater and improvisation, mostly in compagnies, schools and universities.

Leila Chakroun has a PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Lausanne, and is specialised in permaculture, agro-ecological transition and the existential modalities of militant commitment in the Anthropocene. After a post-doctoral contract at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (2023-2024) on the importance of landscape and agroecology in the renewal of urbanism and planning tools, she is currently creating a research project, between the performing arts and sustainability sciences, exploring the potential of ecology to renew the performing arts and the potential of the arts to inspire new epistemologies in the human and social sciences. In doing so, she collaborates with various artistic structures and cultural venues to put these mutually beneficial relationships into practice. She is interested in the notions of multispecies landscapes and urban biodiversity, from a gestural perspective that links the physical, political and territorial dimensions.

Lise Landrin, is a postdotoral fellow at the Bern University and associated researcher PACTE and theater cie Ru'elles. Trained in geography and anthropology, her research approach is dedicated to creating mechanisms that encourage a multiplicity of voices from a critical, postcolonial, and feminist perspective. When Gayatri Spivak asked, "Can the subaltern speak?" her response was essentially yes, but the real question is who can hear them, and what means are available to give voice or presence? It is to this question of methods that engage the body that she is committed. With a thesis in rural areas of Nepal, postdoctoral fieldwork at the France-Luxembourg border, and current fieldwork in Senegal, she specialized in the ethical, methodological, and epistemological aspects of narrative emergence. For seven years, all her research projects have been conducted in collaboration with artists, performers, scenographers, videographers, photographers, and storytellers. In her artistic approach, she trains in various performative practices, specializing in the theater of the oppressed, storytelling, and polyphony. Trained with the Ru'elles company, Myriam Pellicane's Ecole Noire, and the Kaddu Yaraax company, she has nourished her methodological needs through artistic approaches that mobilize the body, the stage, and self-presentation. Issues of public space norms, critical gender perspectives, and intersectionality have led her to co-create "thinking bodies" modules, which she leads in various seminars or during educational interventions.

Some selected references

Ahmed, S. (2014, second ed.) The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Csordas, T.J. (1990) Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology, American Anthroplogie Association, 18, (1), 5-47.

Davies J. & Spencer, D. (eds) (2010) Emotions in the Field. The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford University Press: Stanford, California.

Kleinman, Sh. & Copp, M. A. (1993) Emotions and fieldwork. Qualitative Research Methods Series 28. London, New Dehli: Sage Publications.

Marin, C. (2022) Etre à sa place. Habiter sa vie, habiter son corps. Paris : Les Éditions de l'Observatoire.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945, 2005), Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris : Gallimard.

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968. The visible and the invisible: followed by working notes. Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy. Claude Lefort (ed.). Evanston, Ill: Northwestern Univ. Press.

Political Ecology Conference (2022) Emotional Political Ecologies - Methods, Insights and Potential

Snowber, C. (2016) Embodied inquiry. Writing, living and being through the body. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Somatics Toolkit (online): somaticstoolkit.coventry.ac.uk

Sullivan, S. (2016) '(Re)embodying which body? Philosophical, cross-cultural and personal reflections on corporeality', in Pellicer-Thomas, R., de Lucia, V. & Sullivan, S. (eds.) Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring Re-embodiments Routledge Law, Justice and Ecology Series. London: GlassHouse Books, pp. 119-138.

Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Hof zur Kirschblüte, Lüsslingen, SO

Participation fee: CHF 60 

For students of the CUSO universities (Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel and Fribourg) and from the universities of Bern, Zürich, Luzern, Basel and St. Gallen, accommodation and meals are organised and covered by the CUSO doctoral program in anthropology. 

Travel expenses will be reimbursed via MyCUSO based on half-fare train ticket (2nd class) from the student's university to the place of the activity.

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