Movement, Culture and Society

The research unit MOVEMENT, CULTURE and SOCIETY (MoCS) is based in the humanities and social sciences. MOVEMENT is at the heart of the unit's understanding of human life, and fundamental to MoCS’ research in the different kinds of practices and relationships which ground CULTURAL and SOCIAL aspects of our lives. MoCS conducts research on and with the practices and experiences of people. The research is thereby based on empirical approaches to the analysing of different forms of movement.

Phenomenology grounds MoCS’ investigation of how different movement forms co-determine our interactions and experience of meaning and interdepence. From there, MoCS develops interdisciplinary methodologies that cross-fertilize with phenomenology, cultural analysis and ethnography.

MoCS critically addresses understandings of bodies, movement and interaction by investigating skilled performance, improvisation processes, playfulness and interactivity in established, emerging movement forms and practices and health related issues. MoCS researchers ask questions such as:

-        What is improvisation? How can practitioners train improvisation as a competence of not-being-in-control?

-        How do we understand the bodily engagement in esport? What is a virtual body? and what might we learn from the expertise of esports players?

-        How does the practice of street sport affect practitioners’ perception of urban spaces?

-         How does the socio-cultural context of street sports affect the way they are practiced, institutionalized and understood?

-        How can one be a relational expert? And how is such kind of expertise used in dance and music therapy? 

-        Why are people attracted to sports that inflict pain and injury such as MMA, boxing or Muay Thai? 

-        What is a mindful dancing body – and how can such kind of embodied involvement add to our understanding of wellbeing and sense of self?

-        In which ways can the physicality of the body be present to our awareness when engaged in sport or dance?