WORKSHOPS – DAY 18, 2022 – NEUROCINE@BFM

WORKSHOP PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

WORKSHOPS t.b. a. after all proposals have been received and selected by the reviewing committee . Note, the conference fee automatically included the workshop day, thus you may select your workshops at the later stage (before April 15). Alfter that workshops can be attended only if vacancies.

Workshop 1:

Introduction to micro-phenomenological interviews

Instructor: Katrin Heimann, Aarhus University

What is going on when an idea comes to us? When suddenly a childhood memory rushes back? When we enter a forest, watch a movie, listen to a piece of music, or taste rosemary? Or when we are answering questions about all of this in a scientific lab. These phenomena constitute the very texture of our existence in and outside of academia, yet are difficult to assess and describe in a scientific way. Micro-phenomenology, developed under the supervision of Francisco Varela, is an interview and analysis method designed to become aware, that is attend to, articulate and systematically map out these and other types of subjective experience. As a research tool, it allows to obtain and compare detailed process descriptions of short (ideally seconds to minutes long) moments of such lived experience. For this purpose, the method relies on a precisely described style of interviewing, a rigorous preprocessing evaluating the reliability of report and an elaborate analysis tool set to map out individual and derive generic structures of the experience type explored.

Aim:

The course is aimed at introducing the micro-phenomenological interview as an element of research practise. You will get a hands-on-experience about how to use this method to collect fine-grained descriptions of the lived experience associated with a given sensorial, emotional or cognitive process, or a specific expertise.

Contents include:

  • Getting to know the principles of the Interview method (especially: evocation, structure-oriented questioning)
  • Grasping the principles of the experimental design suitable for data acquisition using Micro-Phenomenological Interviews
  • Initial interviewer training including principles of establishing a relationship to an interviewee, guiding the evocation process so the interviewee can mobilize their concrete memory, guiding the description of timeline and synchronic characteristics of experience dimensions
  • An outview into further interview and analysis training

Literature:

Petitmengin, C. Describing one’s subjective experience in the second person: An interview method for the science of consciousness. Phenom Cogn Sci 5, 229–269 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9022-2