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Contact SenseScapesThe study of ‘SenseScapes’ is a newly emerging interdisciplinary field focussing on sensorial studies of human interaction with physical environments. Challenging an ocular-centricism that arguably underpins much scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences, a new multi-sensory research agenda is being critically developed. The concept of ‘sensescapes’ incorporates the full range of sensory experience in the broadest range of disciplines as sensual experience is mediated through hearing, smell, touch, taste, as well as sight. Including the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, the gustatory and the haptic, the concept of sensescapes enables an interrogation of everyday life that incorporates the meeting of mind, body and environment.
The project of establishing ‘sensescapes’ as a distinct field
of enquiry started in 2004 when we met at an ESRC Transdisciplinary Seminar
Series ‘Knowledge and Power: Exploring the Science/Society Interface
in the Urban Environment Context’. Discussions about how the urban
environment is mediated through the senses ensued and we set about organising
a session at the RGS/IBG conference 2005 ‘Urban sustainability:
rethinking senses of place’. We received more abstracts than we
could accommodate and eventually ran a very successful double session.
Consequently we have guest edited a special issue of the new journal Senses
and Society on ‘Senses and the City’ published in 2007. We
have also obtained funding for an ESRC Seminar Series ‘Rethinking
the urban experience: the sensory production of place’ to run from
2006 to 2008.
LATEST NEWS
Registration is now taking place for Seminar 6 which will take place at the University of Manchester on Wednesday 25th June 2008. Contact Dr Mags Adams to register your interest in attending.
If you would like to be put on a distribution list to hear about SenseScapes events please email Dr Mags Adams.
OUT NOW: Special issue of the journal Senses and Society on 'Senses and the City' Vol 2 Issue 2, guest edited by Mags Adams and Simon Guy.
