Scientific Committee

• Demis Basso, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Michele Cagol, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Carla Cardinaletti, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Attilio Carraro, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Rita Casadei, Department of Education, University of Bologna
• Federico Corni, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

• Denis Francesconi, Department of Teacher Education, University of Vienna 

• Hans U. Fuchs, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano 

• Jesper Haglund, Department of Engineering and Physics, Karlstad University 

• Angelika Pahl, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano 

• Monica Parricchi, Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Participants will be invited to work on one of these subjects during the seminar. To facilitate the creation of four study groups, we kindly ask prospective participants to provide a short outline of their expertise and to share ideas and questions related to the concept(s) they would like to be engaged with during the specialist seminar. These notes will be available on the seminar website to all participants in July 2024.

There will be ample time to share individual perspectives and work on the concept of choice—we encourage participants to make use of embodied practices during group work, whenever possible. The results of reflections, suggestions, and practice will be shared between the study groups at the end of the seminar.

We are planning to publish the results of the seminar either in a book or in a special issue of a journal; after the seminar, we will invite participants to contribute to this endeavor.

The short outlines should be sent to multilab@unibz.it by June 15, 2024; please state your preference for one of the four concepts listed above and add what would be your second choice.

Notices of acceptance will be sent by June 30, 2024.

Seminar fees are 150 € (deadline: 31/7)

Fees include the Seminar welcome, coffee breaks, and lunch on 27/9

You can register for the event by clicking at the link below

www.conftool.com/ssee2024/

(1) Conceptual blending 

Through the development of the theory of conceptual blending, Fauconnier and Turner argue that “all our learning and thinking consists of blends of metaphors based on simple bodily experiences”. By drawing from and integrating structures from different conceptual spaces, we form novel features that did not exist in the original spaces.

(2) Emotion and the body and (3) Motivation and the body

Emotions find expression in the body, moving the body. Certain emotional situations influence the tense state of the body and the quality of its movement, breathing and thinking. So, body awareness is an irreplaceable resource for sensing (discerning, feeling) the emotional process as a flow of energy and information and can be a resource to consciously regulate and guide them. This means that the body has a mind, and the mind has a heart: all these dimensions find their healthiest condition in integration.

(4) The body and energy

Energy, or, more colloquially, force or power, is a broad concept that arises from embodied experiences of (causative or “forceful”) encounters we have with nature, with other people in social situations, and with our personal emotions and feelings. It makes its way into academic fields such as physics, biology, ecology, economy, geopolitics, and policy, where its meaning is formalized, restricted, and therefore changed, at least to some degree. However, in all these fields, it pays off to rediscover the embodied meaning of the concept.