Oxford Phenomenology Network
About
This network was funded from March 2014 to March 2016.
Oxford Phenomenology Network was founded in 2014 to facilitate, prompt, and promote interdisciplinary discussions relating to phenomenological theory and practice. We grew from an Oxford-based cluster to a truly international group. Our seminars, workshops, and conferences engaged with the work of prominent phenomenologists (such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edith Stein, and Jean-Paul Sartre), as well as that of lesser known phenomenological thinkers and practitioners.
Our cross-disciplinary themes included:
perception
embodiment
consciousness
the lived environment
health and well-being
human interaction
Find past social media content on Twitter: @OxPhenomenology
People
Events
Past Events
Oxford Phenomenology Network Seminar: We held a series of six seminars between May 2014 – December 2015.
‘Why do amputees feel their missing hand?: A lesson from Neuroscience’ (Tamar Makin) and ‘The Phenomenology of Pain’ (Katherine Morris)
‘Phenomenology & Health: A Psychotherapist’s View’ (Monica Hanaway)
'Phenomenological Poetics’ (April Pierce) and ‘Merleau-Pontian Machines: Prosthetics in Early Cinema and James Joyce’s Ulysses’ (Cleo Hanaway-Oakley)
‘Heidegger’s Phenomenology in Being and Time’ (Joshua Broggi, University of Oxford):
Seminar convenors: Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley and Erin Lafford
‘Can the Understanding of Suffering End Suffering?’ (Smadar Bustan, University of Luxembourg)
‘Satre on the Analogon, Affect, and Value’ (Daniel Vanello, University of Warwick)
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Thinking From the Outside: Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology (October 2014)
Speaker: Dr Adriana Bontea, University of Oxford
Merleau-Pontian Machines: The Machine-Human Relationship in Joyce’s Ulysses and Chaplin’s Films (June 2014)
Speaker: Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, University of Oxford
Phenomenological Approaches to Correlative Reasoning in Chinese Medicine (February 2015)
Speaker: Professor Elisabeth Hsu (University of Oxford)
Apples, Broken Frames and Fallenness (February 2015)
‘On Apples, Broken Frames and Fallenness: Phenomenology and the Unfamiliar Gaze in Cézanne, Stein and Kafka’ (Ariane Mildenberg, University of Kent, English)
Phenomenology and Health: an Interdisciplinary Symposium (March 2015)
The Inaugural Conference of the Oxford Phenomenology Network
A two-day symposium explored the interrelations between phenomenology and health from a wide variety of perspectives.
Keynote speakers:
- Professor Havi Carel, University of Bristol (Friday)
- Dr Gillian Thomson, University of Central Lancashire (Saturday)
John Clare and the Dys-Appearance of Health (May 2015)
The Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain (May 2015)
Positive Thinking and the Name Game (May 2015)
Part of HowTheLightGetsIn 2015: The Philosophy and Music Festival at Hay
A talk by Havi Carel, President of the World Psychiatric Association
Suffering History: Phenomenology at the Intersection of Disease and Illness (June 2015)
Meet and Greet (October 2015)
An informal ‘meet and greet’ session for anyone with an interest in phenomenology (professional or amateur).
Phenomenology and Literature: an Afternoon Workshop (January 2016)
How can phenomenology and literature inform each other?
A half-day event with a panel of five researchers working at the intersection of phenomenology and literature. Each researcher delivered a 10-to-15-minute talk.
- Dr Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick)
- Dr Carole Bourne-Taylor (University of Oxford)
- Professor Maximilian De Gaynesford (University of Reading)
- Dr Ulrika Maude (Bristol University)
- Dr David Nowell Smith (University of East Anglia)
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Heidegger Reading Group: A Graduate led reading group on Heidegger.
Each term we held a series of 8 seminars.
The set readings were Basic Writings (ed. David Farell Krell). The anthology was a representative sample of seminal works by Martin Heidegger, starting with the Introduction to Being and Time, and leading through the essays such as “On the Essence of Truth” and “The Origin of the Work of Art” all the way up to “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.”
Hilary Term 2016
Covering Chapter 1 of the Introduction to Being and Time, to address its first two sections.
Trinity Term 2016
A study of “On the Essence of Truth” and “The Origin of the Work of Art”.
first four sections of “On the Essence of Truth” up to the heading “The Essence of Truth” (pages 115-128 of Basic Writings).
Hilary Term 2017
Agenda: “Letter on Humanism” (Weeks 1-5) and “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics” (from What is a Thing?– Weeks 6-8).
Trinity Term 2017
A focus on “The Question Concerning Technology”, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, “What Calls for Thinking?” (Basic Writings).
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Pierre Bonnard, Painting Beyond the Boundaries of the Body (February 2016)
A talk by Lucy Whelan on 'Pierre Bonnard, painting beyond the boundaries of the body'. This paper questioned how visual representation relates to the artist’s conscious experience of the world, through the work of the French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947).
Towards a Neurophenomenology of Dementia (March 2016)
A talk by Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick) 'Towards a Neurophenomenology of Dementia'. This paper considered the subject with dementia in relation to traditional phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) and a newer strand of neurophenomenology (Depraz, Varela).
Heidegger, Being, and the Unintelligible (May 2016)
a seminar with Alexander Dowding (University of Oxford) on 'Heidegger, Being, and the Unintelligible'.
Can Philosophy be Therapy? (June 2016)
An Oxford Phenomenology Network talk with Dr Christine Lopes.
Moods, Emotions and Befindlichkeit (June 2016)
One day symposium
A seminar with Francesca Brencio (Western Sydney University) ‘Moods, emotions and Befindlichkeit: A Pathway into Heidegger’s Hermeneutical Phenomenology’.
This talk focused on the relevance of affects or passions in Heidegger’s understanding of human being in terms of “living life” (das Lebende), from the early years of his academic career to Being and Time.
Cross-Disciplinary Phenomenology: A Readiness for the Questionable (June 2016)
One day symposium
A one-day symposium to reassess extant assumptions about phenomenology.
Convenors: Dr Ariane Mildenberg, Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, and Matthew Carbery.
Phenomenology, Imagination, and Perception (November 2016)
Prof. Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei, University of Birmingham examined how Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodied consciousness, particularly in his phenomenological aesthetics and his interpretations of Cézanne, forces a reconsideration of the concept of imagination and its relation to perception.
Swimming is a Humanism (November 2016)
Event Held: Comparing their own experiences with swimming with a fictional account from L'Etranger, the speaker raised the question of the extent to which an education in swimming needs to 'open worlds' for students. Drawing on contrasting presentations of physical activity and the outdoors in the work of Sartre and Camus, the speaker considered the complex roles of embodiment, intentionality, impulse and transcendence in swimming and presented swimming as phenomenologically contested.
The Punishment of Prometheus: Günther Anders and the Obsolescence of Phenomenology (February 2017)
A talk by Christoper Müller (Cardiff University)
Temporal Double Orientation: The Case of Depressive Psychosis (March 2017)
A talk by Marcin Moskalewicz (University of Oxford, Philosophy)
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Phenomenological Psychopathology Reading Group (January 2017)
A series of 8 events held between January – March 2017
Reading and discussing Minkowski, Jaspers, Straus, Binswanger, Merleau-Ponty, Boss, and others.
- Week 1 Introduction
- Week 2 Medard Boss, Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology New York 1979, chapter 13: A General Daseinanalytic Phenomenology of Illness, 197-239.
- Week 3 Erwin W. Straus, Norm and Pathology of I-World Relations, in: Phenomenological Psychology, Basic Books 1966, 255-276.
- Week 4 Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology, John Hopkins UP 1997, Vol. I, Chapter 1 (fragment): Delusion and Awareness of Reality, 93-107.
- Week 5 Eugène Minkowski, The essential disorder underlying schizophrenia and schizophrenic thought, in: The Maudsley Reader in Phenomenological Psychiatry, ed. Broome et. al. Cambridge UP 2012, 143-155 (also in: The Clinical Roots of Schizophrenia Concept, ed. Cutting & Shepherd Cambridge UP 1987).
- Week 6 Wolfgang Blankenburg, First steps toward a psychopathology of ‘common sense’, in: The Maudsley Reader, 158-165 (also in: Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 8(4), 2001, 303-15).
- Week 7 Viktor Emil von Gebsattel, The world of the compulsive, in: The Maudsley Reader, 233-240 (also in: Existence, ed. R. May et. al. New York 1958).
- Week 8 Ludwig Binswanger, On the manic mode of being in the world, in: The Maudsley Reader, 197-203 (also in: Phenomenology: Pure and Applied, ed. E. Straus, Duquesne UP 1964).
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A series of twelve seminars held by the TORCH Oxford Phenomenology Network (April 2017 – May 2018)
Phenomenological Investigations of Romantic Love
A seminar with Mark Burgess (Oxford Brookes University, Dept. of Psychology)
Manic Depression
Seminar: The reading for this is E. Minkowski, Manic Depression, in: Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies, Northwestern University Press 1970, p. 290-305.
Schizoid and Schizophrenic Experience
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Talk: Richard Gipps “Disembodiment, Omnipotence, and Self-Starvation in Laing’s Divided Self” (Reading: R.D. Laing, The Divided Self, Chapters 5 and 10).
Unity of Self in Schizophrenia
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Reading: A. Mishara, "Is minimal self preserved in schizophrenia? A subcomponents view", in: Consciousness and Cognition 16 (3), 2007, p. 715-721.
The Phenomenology of Radiology
‘The Phenomenology of Radiology' Mindaugas Briedis (Mykolas Romeris University, Institute of Humanities)
Dementia
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Talk: Roxana Baiasu “Making Sense of Things in Dementia”
Readings: G.A.M. Widdershoven, R.L.P. Berghmans, "Meaning-making in dementia: a hermeneutic perspective", in: ed. J.C. Hughes, S. J. Louw, S. R. Sabat, Dementia: Mind, Meaning and the Person, Oxford University Press 2006, p. 179-191. M. Summa, T. Fuchs, "Self-experience in dementia", Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia 6 (2), 2015, p. 387-405.
Loss of Self
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Talk: Corina Smith "Nietzsche's 'animal with the prerogative to promise' and a piece of (very) early Chinese literature Mu Shi 牧誓)."
Reading: Louis A Sass, Madness and Modernism chapter 7
The Bodily Unconcious
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Talk: Yanna Popova "Image Schemas and Verbal Synaesthesia"
Reading: T. Fuchs "Body memory and the unconscious”, in Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically, vol 199 of Phenomenologica, pp. 69-82.
The Praecox Feeling
"Psychopathology of time and body".
Talk: Tudi Goze "From the Praecox Feeling to bizarreness in the schizophrenic contact: affectivity and corporality in clinical encounter"
Reading: M. Schwartz, O. Wiggins, "Typifications. The first step for clinical diagnosis in psychiatry", in: The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 175 (2), 1987, p. 65-77.
Modernism, Existentialism, Postcriticism
A seminar on 'Modernism, Existentialism, Postcriticism: Gabriel Marcel Reads Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage' Adam Guy (Faculty of English, University of Oxford).
Disorders of Thinking as Disorders of Relating: A Phenomenological Understanding of Schizophrenic Thought Disorder
Speaker: Richard Gipps (Oxford University)
Seeing Through the World: Phenomenology in Blanchot’s Thomas Novels
Speaker: Dr John McKeane (University of Reading)
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Psychopathology of Time And Body (June 2017)
A one-day workshop
Programme:
- Richard Gipps (University Oxford) "Hallucination as uncancelled anticipation"
- Marcin Moskalewicz (University of Oxford) "Self-awareness, schizophrenia and the problem of time"
- Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick) "Expectation and surprise: the temporality of dementia"
- Daniel Tkatch (University of Louven) “Corporeal symbolism in neuroses”
- Ryan Kemp (London) “Out if it”: addiction as a peculiar form of alienation”
How do Mentally Ill People Experience Time? (June 2017)
European Philosophy Forum
An open a dialogue on the benefits of philosophical reflection in understanding first-person experience of time in mental illness.
Discussion:
- Roxana Baiasu (University of Oxford)
- Bill Fulford (University of Oxford)
- Alexandra de Herbay (Strasbourg)
Oxford Phenomenology Network Panel Discussion (June 2017)
Interdisciplinary panel at the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS) International Conference, 2017
Papers:
- ‘Representing the “Nonrepresentational”: Lived-experience in the work of James Joyce and Henry Green’ Cleo Hanaway-Oakley (University of Oxford)
- ‘“Hooks” and “Anchors”: Doubting with Cézanne in the Twenty-First Century’ Ariane Mildenberg (University of Kent)
- ‘Pierre Bonnard and Continuous Duration’ Lucy Whelan (University of Oxford)
- ‘Phenomenology and Imaginative Consciousness in Modernist Poetics’ Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei (University of Birmingham)
Breath, Breathing, and Being (December 2017)
Workshop Held:
Programme:
A panel of 4 short (15-min) talks from members of the Life of Breath project at Bristol University on the topic of breath, phenomenology, and identity, followed by a discussion:
- Havi Carel, 'The Phenomenology of Breathlessness'
- Tina Williams, ‘Pause for Breath’
- Ronit Yeoli-Tlalim, 'Why are Tibetan notions of breath relevant to all this?'
- Coreen McGuire, ‘Measuring the breath: standardising group categories and normalcy levels in spirometry’
Followed by interactive activities and group discussion sessions.
James Joyce (February 2018)
Book at Lunchtime with Cleo-Hanaway Oakley
James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film
Author Cleo Hanaway Oakley (Oxford Phenomenology Network, University of Oxford) discussed the book and its themes with an expert panel:
- Ulrika Maude (Modernism and Twentieth Century Literature, University of Bristol)
- Katherine Morris (Philosophy, University of Oxford)
- Chair: by Jeri Johnson (English, University of Oxford).
Songs of the Spirit (February 2018)
A Psalm a day for Lent and Easter
Launching a new book by Rev Dr Megan Daffern
Music by the Choir, Prof John Barton speaking,
Peter Larkin, Phenomenology, Ecology (April 2108)
Phenomenology and Poetry Symposium at the University of Warwick
brought together poets, philosophers, ecocritics, and theologians to discuss the poetry of Peter Larkin.
Speakers:
- Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley (University of Oxford)
- Dr Nick Lawrence (University of Warwick)
- Professor John Milbank (University of Nottingham)
- Dr Jonathan Skinner (University of Warwick)
- Dr Harriet Tarlo (Sheffield Hallam University)
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