A meaningful interaction
26/02/20LEUVEN, 20th February 2020 – Anna was delighted to be invited to present her work at KU Leuven’s mintlab (Meaningful Interactions Lab), during their basement talk series. She talked about sensory instructions as a point of focus in research and as a methodology. Before the presentation she discussed the inspiring work happening at the mintlab with Bieke Zaman, Chloé Dierckx, David Geerts and Marije Nouwen and afterwards looked at probes, boardgames, materials cupboards and other sources of inspiration. You can find the abstract of the talk below.
For our next Basement Talk, we are happy to welcome Anna Harris from Maastricht University who will talk about how instructions offer different ways of re-orientating sensory knowledge. This talk will take place on Thursday 20 February at 1pm.
WHERE: Designroom Mintlab (Parkstraat 45, 3000 Leuven)
WHEN: Thursday, February 20 from 1PM to 2PM
It’s a free and public event, but please confirm your attendance via email to marije.nouwen[at]kuleuven.be on Wednesday 19 February the latest.
Speaker: Anna Harris
Title: Sensory instructions: examples and experiments
Abstract: In this basement talk Anna Harris will focus on the use and reconfiguration of instructions, as both an object of enquiry and a methodological approach in teaching and research. In particular, she looks at instructions which offer different ways of re-orientating sensory knowledge. She will look at this topic from four different and intersecting points:
- A look at the sensory lessons entailed in cooking recipes
- Through an ethnographic examination of how protocols used to teach doctors sensory skills are made, used and remade
- By playing with how instructions can inform collaboration in a team sensory ethnography project about training medical skills of diagnosis
- Considering instructions as probes for creative research and teaching more broadly
When exploring these points she will look at how multisensorality is used in instructions to expand imaginative spaces and reorientate the senses. In doing so she tries to develop upon our knowledge of the “arts of noticing” (Tsing 2015), and consider how, as researchers, we can also bring such observations more creatively into our own methodological and academic practices. The talk will draw upon research and experiments she has been doing with her research team, Making Clinical Sense, a European Research Council funded project, as well as her forthcoming book, A Sensory Education (Bloomsbury 2020).
Bio: Anna Harris first worked as a doctor in Australia and the UK before learning anthropology and turning her ethnographic gaze back to the medical profession. Missing the hands-on element of clinical practice in academia, her work endeavors to find creative and practically engaging methods for studying questions of embodiment, learning, materiality and infrastructures of medical practice. She currently works with a great team of anthropologists and historians at Maastricht University on the European Research Council funded project Making Clinical Sense. In her spare time she experiments with cooking, embroidery and knitting.