Hanne De Jaegher
I am a philosopher and cognitive scientist, working to better understand how we think, work, play—basically, live and love—together. For this, I am ongoingly developing and refining the theory of intersubjectivity called participatory sense-making.
Participatory sense-making aims to provide a coherent and comprehensive framework for investigating our social lives. Its concepts build bridges between the different fields working on (inter-)subjectivity. I also study and develop novel empirical methods. These concepts and methods are then applied to real-life issues, for instance autism, therapeutic practices, learning and teaching, intimacy, development. In turn, the applications inform the further development of the theory.
I believe that interdisciplinarity and open-mindedness are essential for this, and I collaborate with researchers and practitioners from many different fields and sectors: psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, sociologists, physical therapists, systems therapists, movement experts, autistic people/people with autism.
I have been educated at Sussex University (D.Phil. 2007), the Free University of Brussels (Licentiate 2001), and through continuing life and work experience. I have been employed in three Marie Skłodowska-Curie projects (an individual grant and 2 training networks), and have worked, among other places, at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, the Sussex Autistic Society, and the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Heidelberg. From 2015–20, I held a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellowship from the Spanish government.
In 2020 I got tenure as Associate Professor (Research) in philosophy at the IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), San Sebastián, Spain.
In 2021-22, I was Peter Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, part of a coherence working on complex systems. Out of that work came, among other things, a short film on the PRISMA method (see https://youtu.be/7ELOz39Y3ko and prismamethod.net).
website: www.hannedejaegher.net
.
Participatory sense-making aims to provide a coherent and comprehensive framework for investigating our social lives. Its concepts build bridges between the different fields working on (inter-)subjectivity. I also study and develop novel empirical methods. These concepts and methods are then applied to real-life issues, for instance autism, therapeutic practices, learning and teaching, intimacy, development. In turn, the applications inform the further development of the theory.
I believe that interdisciplinarity and open-mindedness are essential for this, and I collaborate with researchers and practitioners from many different fields and sectors: psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, sociologists, physical therapists, systems therapists, movement experts, autistic people/people with autism.
I have been educated at Sussex University (D.Phil. 2007), the Free University of Brussels (Licentiate 2001), and through continuing life and work experience. I have been employed in three Marie Skłodowska-Curie projects (an individual grant and 2 training networks), and have worked, among other places, at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, the Sussex Autistic Society, and the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Heidelberg. From 2015–20, I held a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellowship from the Spanish government.
In 2020 I got tenure as Associate Professor (Research) in philosophy at the IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), San Sebastián, Spain.
In 2021-22, I was Peter Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, part of a coherence working on complex systems. Out of that work came, among other things, a short film on the PRISMA method (see https://youtu.be/7ELOz39Y3ko and prismamethod.net).
website: www.hannedejaegher.net
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Books by Hanne De Jaegher
We raken gefrustreerd wanneer een vriend niet terugbelt. We missen een geliefde die ver weg is. We komen elkaar tegen op straat. We vrijen. We voelen ons eenzaam. Soms terwijl we vrijen.
We voelen ons diep met iemand verbonden. We verwachten veel. We doen ons best om niet te veel te verwachten. Soms lukt dat, en dan kunnen we elkaar echt ontmoeten.
Dit boek gaat over de spanningen die in elke relatie aanwezig zijn. In romantische relaties, maar ook in andere. Je verhoudt je tot de anderen en tot jezelf. Maar je verhoudt je ook tot de verhouding zelf.
Dat is een nieuw idee in de cognitiewetenschappen. Daar gaat het veel vaker over kennen, dan over liefhebben. Maar wat als kennen en liefhebben eigenlijk heel dicht bij elkaar zouden liggen?
In dit boek breekt cognitiefilosoof Hanne De Jaegher een lans om kennen en liefhebben samen te bestuderen. Want allebei zijn het geëngageerde relaties vol spanningen. Zo schrijft de auteur een wonderlijk nieuw hoofdstuk in de filosofie van de liefde.
Hanne De Jaegher is cognitiefilosoof. Ze deed onderzoek aan de universiteiten van Sussex en Heidelberg. Vandaag is ze Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow aan de Universiteit van het Baskenland (San Sebastian).
Papers by Hanne De Jaegher
Objectives. To study how embodied and intersubjective processes are modified in online psychotherapy sessions.
Design. Taking the enactive concept of participatory sense-making as a guiding thread, we designed an interpretative phenomenological analysis to examine the experiences of embodiment in online therapy.
Methods. We conducted phenomenological semi-structured interviews with patients and therapists who have recently switched from face-to-face encounters to online modality.
Results. Adjustments in verbal and nonverbal behavior, gaze behavior, management of silences, and displacements of non-intentional and pre-reflective patterns onto reflective ones are reported as necessary to compensate for changes introduced in the online modality.
Conclusions. From an enactive perspective, such adaptations manifest regulatory processes aimed at sustaining interactive dynamics and coordinating the primordial tension between relational and individual norms in social encounters.
I introduce such an approach, based on the enactive theory of participatory sense-making and supported by insights from indigenous epistemologies. This approach helps counteract the homogenising tendencies of the "global mental health" movement, which attempts to erase rather than recognise difference, and often precludes respectful engagements. Based in the lived experiences of people in their socio-cultural-material and interactive contexts, I put forward an engaged-even engaging-epistemology for understanding how we interact across difference. From this perspective, we see participatory sense-making at work across the scientific, diagnostic, therapeutic, and everyday interactions of autistic and non-autistic people, and how everyone can invite and support more of it.
(Paper accepted for publication in Transcultural Psychiatry, this version is before proofs.)
We raken gefrustreerd wanneer een vriend niet terugbelt. We missen een geliefde die ver weg is. We komen elkaar tegen op straat. We vrijen. We voelen ons eenzaam. Soms terwijl we vrijen.
We voelen ons diep met iemand verbonden. We verwachten veel. We doen ons best om niet te veel te verwachten. Soms lukt dat, en dan kunnen we elkaar echt ontmoeten.
Dit boek gaat over de spanningen die in elke relatie aanwezig zijn. In romantische relaties, maar ook in andere. Je verhoudt je tot de anderen en tot jezelf. Maar je verhoudt je ook tot de verhouding zelf.
Dat is een nieuw idee in de cognitiewetenschappen. Daar gaat het veel vaker over kennen, dan over liefhebben. Maar wat als kennen en liefhebben eigenlijk heel dicht bij elkaar zouden liggen?
In dit boek breekt cognitiefilosoof Hanne De Jaegher een lans om kennen en liefhebben samen te bestuderen. Want allebei zijn het geëngageerde relaties vol spanningen. Zo schrijft de auteur een wonderlijk nieuw hoofdstuk in de filosofie van de liefde.
Hanne De Jaegher is cognitiefilosoof. Ze deed onderzoek aan de universiteiten van Sussex en Heidelberg. Vandaag is ze Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow aan de Universiteit van het Baskenland (San Sebastian).
Objectives. To study how embodied and intersubjective processes are modified in online psychotherapy sessions.
Design. Taking the enactive concept of participatory sense-making as a guiding thread, we designed an interpretative phenomenological analysis to examine the experiences of embodiment in online therapy.
Methods. We conducted phenomenological semi-structured interviews with patients and therapists who have recently switched from face-to-face encounters to online modality.
Results. Adjustments in verbal and nonverbal behavior, gaze behavior, management of silences, and displacements of non-intentional and pre-reflective patterns onto reflective ones are reported as necessary to compensate for changes introduced in the online modality.
Conclusions. From an enactive perspective, such adaptations manifest regulatory processes aimed at sustaining interactive dynamics and coordinating the primordial tension between relational and individual norms in social encounters.
I introduce such an approach, based on the enactive theory of participatory sense-making and supported by insights from indigenous epistemologies. This approach helps counteract the homogenising tendencies of the "global mental health" movement, which attempts to erase rather than recognise difference, and often precludes respectful engagements. Based in the lived experiences of people in their socio-cultural-material and interactive contexts, I put forward an engaged-even engaging-epistemology for understanding how we interact across difference. From this perspective, we see participatory sense-making at work across the scientific, diagnostic, therapeutic, and everyday interactions of autistic and non-autistic people, and how everyone can invite and support more of it.
(Paper accepted for publication in Transcultural Psychiatry, this version is before proofs.)
→Existing digital technologies exacerbate the biases of the human mind, inhibiting diversity initiatives.
→Diversity computing is a new framework incorporating innovation in theory, methodology, and technology that embraces diversity and avoids normative ordering.
Conclusion:
We hope this article has articulated a vision for the role computing might play, not just in recording or facilitating interactions, but in shaping and developing shared meaning between people. We envisage a future where diversity computing devices will support fluency, respect, and egalitarianism in interpersonal interactions in contexts ranging from political negotiations and international trade deals to corporate hiring panels and romantic encounters. Anywhere that individual differences impede mutual understanding and effective working, diversity computing will have a role.
The enactive approach is neither individualistic, nor interactionist. However, we express skepticism regarding the usefulness of hybrid approaches, which perpetuate dualistic distinctions between mind and body. Instead, the tensions in the notion of participatory sense-making are elaborated dialectically, demonstrating how complex forms of social agency, including language, develop from the primordial tension in participatory sense-making.
Keywords. Enactive approach. Intersubjectivity. Participatory sense-making. Social cognition. Social interaction.
This chapter provides evidence from different fields to support the idea of an intersubjective turn. Moreover, I argue that the framework of participatory sense-making can provide conceptual tools for the inter-disciplinary probing, discussion, analysis, and coherence needed to support the intersubjective turn in research on social understanding.
The session was organized by Gün Semin, and the other speakers were Shihui Han, Benjamin K. Bergen, and Elinor Ochs.