Rationale

Debate about the role of the senses in shaping our experience are developing rapidly across disciplines. 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 explored. This debate is particularly resonant within studies of ‘the city’ where, as Phyllis Lambert (curator of a recent Canadian exhibition on ‘senses and the city’) puts it, the “whole gamut of ‘sensorial’ phenomena that figure prominently in daily experience, and largely determine the design of buildings, are strikingly absent from urban studies” (Lambert, 2005, 15). There have long been calls from within architectural studies for an “architecture of the senses” that challenges the “dominance of the eye” and ‘recognises the realms of hearing, smell and taste”, the “haptic architecture of the muscle and the skin” (Pallasmaa, 1996, 48).  Such sensory studies would go beyond ‘reading or visualising’ the city, and instead explore the significance of “sensing the city through multiple sensory modalities” (Howes, 2005, 323).

Currently, however, some of the most innovative research and thinking in the field of sensory studies is to be found in auditory studies particularly acoustic ecology, music and cultural studies. Additionally, much work within the field of ‘sensescapes’ focuses on one or a combination of two senses and articulates a gap within which the other senses are absent.  In recent years there has been some momentum to collate writings from researchers working on the senses in different disciplinary settings, but there is a striking need to facilitate this further in order to intellectually develop this immature interdisciplinary area of work. 

Whilst the facility exists at this time to meet and interact with others currently working within these areas within a single discipline, through annual conferences for example, the intellectual space for dialogue between and beyond disciplines is lacking.  In the UK (and beyond), we would argue that at present there is no such space, yet there is a growing number of dispersed researchers who are developing a ‘sensory studies’ by acknowledging each others work and reaching out across disciplinary boundaries. 

The aims of this seminar series are, therefore, to open up spaces for interdisciplinary research and collaboration, to bring together a core group of researchers and to enable the identification of others working in this field, in order to share ideas, improve knowledge, develop theory, contribute to the development of policy and stimulate the development of a ‘sensory urbanism’ agenda in the UK.  This has been explored at the RGS 2005 conference where the applicants convened a session entitled ‘Urban sustainability: rethinking senses of place’, bringing together ‘sensory’ researchers from across disciplines.  This seminar series will build upon this demonstrated momentum in the UK academic community, will enable us to develop and mature this burgeoning network and will give context and perspective to meetings.

Aims

• To create a forum which brings together a number of currently disconnected strands of research within the social sciences and humanities and physical and life science exploring and examining the use of senses in understanding cities
• To stimulate interdisciplinary debate around issues of cities and the senses in the UK
• To enable dialogue between postgraduates, newer researchers and established researchers working in the UK and beyond
• To engage a variety of stakeholders from the planning, policy and public interests groups
• To provide a foundation for future research collaborations on sensory urbanism