Techne Congress: On Experience 

27th Jan 2021 - 29th Jan 2021 

Bookings for the Congress are now open! Please see the Congress website for further details and to book in.

The January 2021 Techne Congress is hosted by Brunel University. The theme of the conference is the question of ‘Experience’. A host of difficult and complex questions circle around this apparently simple word from everyday language. To what extent should experience be a touchstone in the production of knowledge and claims about the world? How are we to conceive the relationship between experience and theory?  Why is experience important in relation to cultural and media representations? And what is ‘experience’ anyway? Along with these philosophical and theoretical questions, experience also poses questions concerning the methods we use to capture experience, analyse it and present it in our research.

The Congress will feature keynote talks by Professor Esther Leslie (Birkbeck College) on how digital technology has transformed the nature of experience, Professor David Howes (Concordia University) on sensory ethnography, where the senses are both object of study and means of inquiry, and Professor Benjamin Zephaniah (Brunel University) on how the question of experience has been important for his creative writing. Other guests joining Brunel colleagues from across the arts, humanities and social sciences, include Dr Jason Arday (Durham University) and Sophie Siddiqui (Institute of Race Relations) for a session on Race and Academia.

As a little teaser and introduction to the congress, you can view this video essay on Experience by Professor Michael Wayne, a co-organiser of the conference, here.