I currently teach an course at Iarts, called "The Body as Research Instrument" (bachelor of interdisciplinary arts Maastricht); an honours program at the University of Amsterdam, called "Feeling Science"; short intensive courses at social science faculties (e.g at the University of Amsterdam / AISSR) and combine academic thinking with embodiment, movement and sensitivity sessions at conferences and other venues.
I usually works site-specific and develops workshops and courses for a specific venue or group of people. Below you can find an overview of different courses I teach, that can be attuned to space, context, group, needs, conditions, etc.
The Body as sensitive research instrument
Based on my background and PhD research, I developed an educational practice in which I teach body awareness as research skill. I teach this program in different forms (from 2-day workshops to a year-long subject), working with the idea of “the body as research instrument”. Deriving from the idea that in both art and science, the researcher’s body is her most important research instrument, I work with studentes, teachers and professionals on becoming aware of what makes their instrument specific and how this relates to their scientific and artistic practices. Courses are build up around the following questions:
1. Inside the instrument / Opening up the blackbox: what are ways that we use our bodies, what other repertoires are there?
2. Outside the instrument / space: how to position? What spaces? How do we enacts space and vice versa?
3. Attuning: how do we attune to our environment? What are ways of attuning and what ways are most relevant for us and our research practice
4. What goes in? How do we “feed” our bodies, in terms of information, impulses, rest, inspiration, network and community, etc?
5. What comes out? How do we articulate, communicate and express ourselves? What is specific to our specific voice?
6. Processing information: How do we process what comes in into what goes out? How does “the magic” happen?
7. How to take care of the instrument? Based on what we learned about the specificities of our bodies and the (partly invisible) work we do, what kind of care do we need to give to our bodies in order to make them sustainably sensitive research instruments?
Drawing research methods
A workshop in which we explore drawing as a research tool. Rather than starting from presupposed ideas of what drawing is or how a drawing should look like, participants are invited to practically research ways and forms in which drawing can work for their specific research. We experiment with different methods and practice different drawing exercises, to create a method that sensitizes them to the worlds they research.
Writing bodies
In this workshop, we explore writing as sensitizing tool. Similar to how taste charts help the taste practitioner become a nuanced taster through a back and forth between tasting and finding words, a writing proces can make us more and more sensitive to our surroundings (or any subject we are writing on / any object we are writing about). By attending to the writing proces as a form of tasting, we do not use writing as a way to “capture” reality, but as a tool to tentatively attune themselves to realities.
Sensitivities at work
A group course and training for researchers, health care practitioners or practitioners from (almost) any other profession that involves placing the body in an environment with other bodies. Participants explore ways of attending to their bodies while being in connection, ways of being present, and ways of attuning themselves to their surroundings. I provide cues and prompts to help participants analyse what makes their working environment and conditions specific, what this asks of them and their bodies, which sensitivities they develop in their work and which sensitivities they could or should cultivate, and what kind of care they and their bodies need to thrive in and recuperate from (both visible and invisible) work.