TECT 2023: "Movement, Mindfulness and Cognitive Science"

Online Course (5 ECT)

The program begins with an online course which consists of 12 webinars, taking place from March 7th to May 30th 2023. Each webinar provides lecture, inputs, audio-visual information, plus an interactive part with an international TECT expert, including discussions and/or exercises. Practices and working in groups and pairs will allow to experience a very learning-community. Teachers/trainers are come from all TECT partner universities and the Micro-phenomenology Lab.
​Interdisciplinary foundations of Embodied Critical Thinking:
  • Introducing approaches to embodied cognition in philosophy and cognitive science
  • The challenge of the first-person perspective and lived experience in the understanding of consciousness
  • Mindfulness and Brain Modeling
  • Artificial Intelligence and Embodied Thinking
  • Environmental immersion and design thinking
  • Introducing the Methods of TECT with a special emphasis on situated thinking in environmental context: “Focusing”, “Thinking-at-the-Edge”, “Reflexive Care”, “Close Talking”, “radical listening”, “Environmental Immersion”.

Schedule: The online course will take place on Tuesdays, 13:30-16:00 Central Time, from March 7th to May 30th.

Summer School (5 ECT)

The TECT summer school will address the question: What is it like to be embodied and how does more awareness of embodied experience affect the practice of differentiated thinking and research? The focus will be on hands-on exploration of participants’ experiential landscapes – they will explore methods of embodied thinking and research practices by applying various approaches of inquiring and reporting on lived experience, such as Micro-phenomenology, Thinking at the Edge, and meditative self-inquiry. Students will also be introduced to exploring the mind through movement and will get to know traditional embodied practices, such as the (Tibetan-Buddhist) monastic debate. In the summer school, different approaches to thinking will not only be practiced but will go into dialogue with each other to explore the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research. 
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University of Groningen
Results and goals: After the summer school, the students will be able to understand the place of contemplative and experiential first-person approaches within the broader scope of cognitive science; become more familiar with their own experiential landscapes; be able to understand the basics of a chosen first-person approach as a way of exploring embodiment and applying it to embodied critical thinking.

Summer School Teachers

Independent Project (5 ECT)

The independent projects are the final step in the TECT program and take place following the summer schools. They are pursued across the field of environment, design and / or philosophy and are supervised by a TECT teacher of the students / researcher’s choice. The projects are due in October 2023. ​