Ulrike Scholtes (PhD) works at the intersection of art, anthropology and body work. She is specialized in artistic research, embodied methods and science-art crossovers. She developed the Embodied Methods research track for research centre What Art Knows (Academy of Arts, Maastricht). She is one of the initiators of art collective BLOB in Amsterdam and coaches and supervises artistic research projects (on bachelor, master and PhD level) at Art Academy Maastricht, Theatre Academy Maastricht, University of Amsterdam and of individual artists.
Ulrike holds a PhD, a master in anthropology and a bachelor in fine arts. She is a certified yoga teacher, Pilates teacher, massage therapist and somatic coach. Her personal interest in the body and movement goes way back to her childhood when she constantly encountered and often exceeded the limitations of her body. Professionally, her journey to and through the body began with her yoga studies and gained both depth and scope through years of studying somatics and Butoh dance in Europe and Japan.
After having experienced and practiced very different types of body work and practices of somatic awareness, such as Yoga, meditation, Mindfulness, Feldenkrais, Pilates, Shiatsu, Laban Movement Analyses, Noguchi Taiso, Mime, Clowning, Butoh and other types of dance, she conducted a phd research in which she developed artistic research methods to articulate feeling and sensitivity. After finishing her phd, she has specialized herself in artistic research, embodied methods and paper objects that foster feeling and sensitivity.
Currently, Ulrike works for research centre What Art Knows, MERIAN platform for PhD's in artistic research, Iarts and Master of Theatre (both Zuyd, Maastricht) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA), besides working on her individual research and artistic projects. She is also part of the art collective BLOB.