There is a growing interest in the social sciences, humanities and in health-related disciplines to investigate certain kinds of questions that require a phenomenological sensitivity to lived experience of (children’s, adults’, patients’, clients’) life worlds. This course explores the phenomenology of practice through experiential writing, philosophy and human science theory, and has a processual character over two semesters.

The course orients to the phenomenological approach of investigating lived experience (short exercises), phenomenological methods for investigating meaning, the methods of the phenomenological interview and writing the data, and to a variety of phenomenological sources including classic philosophical texts, fiction, movies and visual art. Participants will be exposed to much interesting and challenging work, reading and writing.

The planned result of the course in phenomenological research and writing is a publishable phenomenological text. The course therefore is appropriate for students who are writing a phenomenological dissertation or intend to write one or more phenomenological articles in their dissertation. We include a ‘pre-course paper’ to the course, handed in at Canvas on the 30 March 2023, which is two weeks ahead of course start.

The course language is Norwegian/English dependent on participants and teachers.

The course is taught on Zoom mainly on Thursdays in weeks 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23 and 24 in the spring 2023, and in weeks 33, 34, 36 and 38 fall 2023. The seminars will usually take place 4 hours in the afternoon. The exact time of each seminar will be negotiated on the background of the time zones of the teachers for the seminar. Hand in of final paper in week 41 – 42.

Dates, Themes and Teachers

Online PhD-course 10 ECTS

Participation: Max 10 PhD students

Teachers: Professor Tone Saevi VID (in charge) / Professor Patrick Howard CPU, and others

Final date of registration: March 1. 2023

Start of the course: Thursday, April 13, 2023, 16-20

End of the course: Week 42 2023

General Information

Writing is key to phenomenological insight. Therefore, every session includes writing and home lessons. Reading and writing go hand in hand. Therefore, much extra reading should be counted on. Reading each other’s texts helps move from subjective to intersubjective seeing and thus peer collaboration and work in small groups are given priority during and between the course days.

Pre-course paper

Please, describe in about 500 words your interest in and/or former experience with phenomenological writing and reading, and describe in what ways your dissertation orients to / or will benefit from phenomenological insights. In short: why would you like to participate in the course?

The paper should be delivered in Canvas by March 30 2023.