Regarding the question of presence in online education: A performative pedagogical perspective

In response to the interruption of all levels of education following COVID-19, we start by underlining the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Next, we inquire into the question of presence in physical and virtual classrooms, and offer a discussion of presence as "being-here-now,” a "movement toward becoming,” and as gelassenheit or "releasement toward things.” We highlight the materiality of communication, and the performative production and transformation of the classroom space. Finally, we illustrate how performative writing enhances the sense of being-here-now, and facilitates the co-inhabiting of online learning spaces that lack co-presence of bodies in the same physical environment.

Designing an Empathy Training for Depression Prevention Using Virtual Reality and a Preliminary Study

As virtual reality (VR) is labeled by many as 'an ultimate empathy machine,' immersive VR applications have the potential to assist in empathy training for mental healthcare such as depression [21]. In responding to the increasing numbers of diagnosed depression throughout COVID-19, a first-person VR adventure game called 'Schwer' was designed and prototyped by the authors' research team to provide a social support environment for depression treatment. To continue the study and assess the training effectiveness for an appropriate level of empathy, this current article includes a brief survey on data analytics models and features to accumulate evidence for the next phase of the study, an interactive game-level design for the 'Reconstruction' stage, and a preliminary study with data collection. The preliminary study was conducted with a post-game interview to evaluate the design of the levels and their effectiveness in empathy training. Results showed that the game was rated as immersive by all participants. Feedback on the avatar design indicated that two out of three of the non-player characters (NPCs) have made the intended effect. Participants showed mostly positive opinion towards their experienced empathy and provided feedback on innovative teleport mechanism and game interaction. The findings from the literature review and the results of the preliminary study will be used to further improve the existing system and add the data analytics model training. The long-term research goal is to contribute to the healthcare field by developing a dynamic AI-based biofeedback immersive VR system in assisting depression prevention. © 2023 IEEE.

Closer to and further away – emergency-remote teacher education, orientations and student-bodies

This paper contributes knowledge on the effects of materiality and space on teaching and equal access to teacher education. Through an intersectional analysis, with a specific focus on orientations, bodies and materiality, we show how student-bodies orientate closer to or further from various parts of teacher education as an effect of the materiality of emergency-remote vs. on-campus education. We elaborate on three different student-body orientating processes that take place during teacher education. These are all related to the emergency-remote education implemented as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We call these processes ‘remote education as relief ', ‘the embodiedness of raising the hand on Zoom' and ‘energy-draining pre-recorded lectures'. We show how the materiality of emergency-remote education orientates the participants situated within the bodily horizons of intersectional positions of being deaf, female, racialized as non-white and not having Swedish as a first language, both closer to and further away from various parts of their teacher education. The analysis is based on both individual and group interviews with twelve teacher students. The paper contributes insights to emergency-remote education, remote education and on-campus educating. © 2022 Emilia Åkesson, Edyta Just & Katarina Eriksson Barajas.

Close to me but unreachable: spotting the link between peripersonal space and empathy.

The space surrounding the body [i.e. peripersonal space (PPS)] has a crucial impact on individuals' interactions with the environment. Research showed that the interaction within the PPS increases individuals' behavioral and neural responses. Furthermore, individuals' empathy is affected by the distance between them and the observed stimuli. This study investigated empathic responses to painfully stimulated or gently touched faces presented within the PPS depending on the presence vs absence of a transparent barrier erected to prevent the interaction. To this aim, participants had to determine whether faces were painfully stimulated or gently touched, while their electroencephalographic signals were recorded. Brain activity [i.e. event-related potentials (ERPs) and source activations] was separately compared for the two types of stimuli (i.e. gently touched vs painfully stimulated faces) across two barrier conditions: (i) no-barrier between participants and the screen (i.e. no-barrier) and (ii) a plexiglass barrier erected between participants and the screen (i.e. barrier). While the barrier did not affect performance behaviorally, it reduced cortical activation at both the ERP and source activation levels in brain areas that regulate the interpersonal interaction (i.e. primary, somatosensory, premotor cortices and inferior frontal gyrus). These findings suggest that the barrier, precluding the possibility of interacting, reduced the observer's empathy.

Algorithmic Rituals

Algorithmic Rituals is a facilitated art experience in which visitors create collaborative movement-based "rituals" to reflect on their technology use habits. After generating a series of movements, attendees incorporate rules for how to relate their movements to those of other attendees, which allows patterns and feedback loops to form. The goal of the experience is to provide an embodied way for attendees to explore technosocial issues around algorithmic decision making and habitual technology use and discuss them in an open, facilitated context. The embodied aspects of movement creation provide a dedicated space for reflection and relation to others. The embodied approach exemplified by Algorithmic Rituals is particularly relevant to questions of bridging embodied methods of thinking about technology with the public in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

"I'll never sacrifice my well-being again:" The journey from negative to positive body image among women who perceive their body to deviate from societal norms.

We conducted one-on-one interviews with 25 Canadian cisgender women who self-identified as having (a) a condition or characteristic causing their body to deviate from societal norms and (b) overcome a negative body image to develop a positive body image. Using coding reliability thematic analyses, we identified 12 themes (italicised) involving processes and experiences associated with shifts in body image. Women had moments that sparked and confirmed the importance of building positive body image (Enough is Enough). They experienced accepting Social Connections and Community and Accessed Critical Knowledge conducive to body positivity. They engaged in Joyful Movement, Adaptive Appearance Investment, and Joyful and Intuitive Eating. They identified how Changing Societal Norms, Becoming Older and Wiser, COVID-19 Pandemic, having Illnesses and Medical Conditions, Pregnancy and Motherhood, and Spirituality, Religion, and Nature affected their body image, values, and valued action. As women engaged in these processes and experiences, shifts occurred in their perceptions of their embodied selves in the world, represented by four "Bigger Lessons:" I Am More Than My Looks, I Am More Than My Body, I am More Than My Self, and I am Inherently Worthy of Love, Respect, and Joy. These findings can inform body image programmes and clinical interventions.

Embodied approaches to supervision: The listening body

Movement and the body are an essential aspect of supervision, whether we explicitly work with the body or not. The interest of this book is in the intentional focus on the body and movement and how this can serve the supervisory process. The book presents innovative approaches and reflective accounts of working with the body in supervision. The supervisory interventions open up new ways of seeing, listening and understanding through embodied processes. The authors, all experts in their fields, each bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, raising awareness of the value of working with the body in the supervisory relationship. The hybrid nature of the book reflects the current climate of cross-modality fertility in the world of psychotherapy. The book offers further insights into how embodiment is defined and can be attended to within supervision sessions. It presents with clarity diverse approaches to supervision practice where the body is at the center of facilitating the reflection and containment of supervisees, in both a one-to-one and a group context. In addition, each chapter contains case vignettes illustrating the application of a particular supervision model, whether working in person, online, indoors or outside or in the context of self-supervision. Taking shape in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the book emerges at a time of unprecedented challenges. So, besides reflecting on their specific approach, some contributors offer reflections on the impact of the pandemic on their practice. The ten chapters present a variety of embodied approaches to supervision rooted in a diverse range of practices including body psychotherapy, psychodrama, eco-supervision, dance movement psychotherapy, family therapy and drama therapy. This text will be of value to supervisors and supervisors-in-training, psychotherapists, practitioners seeking supervision and anyone keen to learn more about embodied approaches in supervision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

KIMA: Voice: The human voice as embodied presence

Through and post-COVID, disembodied technological interactions were experi-enced at an unprecedented, often involuntary level in households across the world, with the human voice often providing a link between geographically disconnected individuals, resulting in a decrease in perceived social connectedness. Recent research suggests that effects of social isolation and sensory deprivation can be mitigated through participatory media arts experiences (Tymoszuk et al. 2020;Tejada et al. 2020, All-Party Parliamentary Report 2017). Over the last ten years, the art collective Analema Group has explored the pivotal role of the human voice as means for social connectedness through their artwork KIMA (Tate, National Gallery, Barbican). The current development of KIMA: Voice seeks to challenge experiences of embodiment in remote environments. This article and artwork pres-entation will present a new development KIMA: Voice designed to provide new forms of embodied experiences across a distance. The publication will be supported by a demonstration and exhibition of the artwork. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

The Wandering of Ruins: An Interview With Public Movement

The Israel-based "performative research body" Public Movement has created more than forty actions for unsuspecting audiences in public and museum-goers inside art institutions across Europe, Asia, Australia, the United States, and Israel. The group's public choreographies, what they term "actions," research social orders, rituals, and symbols;in turn, their work has been documented, discussed, historicized, and critically investigated by Iocal news reporters, art critics, theorists, and scholars.' Mainstream reports typically summarize the group's public choreographies before getting reactions from participants and passersby;critics, theorists, and scholars usually assess the work as performance. That the group attracts seemingly disparate audiences, one specialist and one not, evinces their choreographies as public art. As a public art curator, I am fascinated by Public Movement's ability to hold captive these two audiences. To me, public art is most powerful when it affiliates seemingly dissimilar people or ideas, not necessarily to unite, but to highlight points of similarity or difference. Public Movement does this in their actions that investigate social orders, rituals, and symbols that highlight commonalities and dissonance across various cultures and conflicts. Almost a year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, I sat down with one of Public Movement's founders and its current director, Dana Yahalomi, to discuss how Public Movement embodies the ethos of permanent monuments in their ephemeral, performative actions. In generally considering dissent and its physical manifestation of protests, we reflect on what it means when bodies come together and the possibilities of suspending judgment.

Unofficial Vaccine Advocates: Technical Communication, Localization, and Care by COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Participants: TCQ

This article reports on an interview-based study with COVID-19 vaccine trial participants (n = 40) and addresses three strategies participants used to localize vaccine communication for their communities: (1) presenting embodied evidence, (2) demystifying clinical research, (3) operationalizing relationships. These strategies contribute to understandings of embodiment, relationships, and localization in technical and professional communication (TPC). They also show how participants used TPC to resist dominant individualist approaches to health and to practice collective care.

On race, human variation, and who gets and dies of sepsis

COVID-19 has highlighted a brutal reality known for decades, that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color bear a disproportionate burden of US annual sepsis cases. While plentiful research funds have been spent investigating genetic reasons for racial disparities in sepsis, an abundance of research shows that sepsis incidence and mortality maps to indicators of colonial practices including residential segregation, economic and marginalization sepsis, and denial of care. Here we argue that sepsis risk is an immunological embodiment of racism in colonial states, that the factors contributing to sepsis disparities are insidious and systemic. We show that regardless of causative pathogen, or host ancestry, racialized people get and die of sepsis most frequently in a pattern repeatedly reiterated worldwide. Lastly, we argue that while alleviation of sepsis disparities requires radical, multiscale intervention, biological anthropologists have a responsibility in this crisis. While some of us can harness our expertise to take on the ground action in sepsis prevention, all of us can leverage our positions as the first point of contact for in depth human biology instruction on most college campuses. As a leading cause of death worldwide, and a syndrome that exhibits the interplay between human physiology, race and environment, sepsis is at the nexus of major themes in biological anthropology and is a natural fit for the field's curriculum. In adopting a discussion of race and sepsis in our courses, we not only develop new research areas but increase public awareness of both sepsis and the factors contributing to uneven sepsis burden.Copyright © 2022 The Authors. American Journal of Biological Anthropology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Caring for myself while I'm growing somebody else: Mindful self-care buffers between pregnancy body disconnection and distress.

Pregnancy embodiment describes the way a pregnant individual inhabits their body, including disconnection and connection, likely influencing both distress and well-being. Emerging work indicates that acceptance of pregnancy-related bodily change may support well-being, particularly when co-occurring with self-care behaviors. Yet, specific associations of pregnant embodiment and intentional, individualized self-care practices (mindful self-care; MSC) with well-being and distress remain unexamined. The present study tested independent and interactive associations between MSC and positive embodiment (body agency), and negative embodiment (body estrangement), respectively, with maternal distress and well-being in a sample of US pregnant women (N = 179; Mage = 31.3 years, aged 21-43; 85.6 % White, 4.9 % Hispanic/Latinx). Challenge and threat/harm appraisals of the COVID-19 pandemic were included in the model to represent responses to the unique sociohistorical context. Measurement-corrected path analytic models explained a substantial proportion of variation in well-being and a smaller proportion in prenatal distress. Among those with higher MSC, the association between body estrangement and prenatal distress was weaker. Results support mindful self-care as protective for pregnancy distress in the setting of body disconnection. Future individualized health promotion might consider how high-stress contexts influence application of self-care practices and impact distress and well-being during pregnancy.

Learning with Indigenous wisdom in a time of multiple crises: embodied and emplaced early childhood pedagogies

In this position paper we consider the significance of global climate activism by children and young people in the light of ongoing western adult-centric policies and educational practices that largely continue to exclude Indigenous perspectives. Reflecting on the implications of this hegemony in the face of the convergent crises of climate and COVID-19 and concomitant exacerbations of social inequities, we acknowledge the impact of this reality on the emotional wellbeing of children, young people and Indigenous peoples, many of whom may be encountering an overwhelming sense of existential trauma and ecological grief. Drawing on our previous research we provide examples of early childhood pedagogies which resonate Indigenous values of relationality. These include trust in children's judgement in managing risks, fostering a sense of collective pride and identity, and affirming accountability to the wider collectivity of humans and more-than-human entities. We suggest that such grounding in local Indigenous onto-epistemologies can provide inspiration for educational programmes, including environmental education and education for sustainability, as well as for local governance. © 2021 Educational Review.

Dream by the Royal Shakespeare Company: a dystopian experience of live performance, between avatars and virtual reality

If, by definition, the performing event could not do without the co-presence in space and time of spectators and actors (Brook 21), history has shown us how profound reflections on the possibility of shifting the fundamental axes of theater have nevertheless come about. The increasingly substantial presence of video within performances, even if filmed in real-time, is one example that has called into question the fundamental concept of hie et nunc. The creation of performances for a single spectator has altered the anthropological binomial community/ritual in addition to the "non-human" entity of the performer, from metal theater to cyborg performance (Schrum). The Royal Shakespeare Company's new production (2021) Dream will be analyzed to discuss the particular artistic experimentation that has become widespread in the Covid era. This production, which is a technological performance watched by more than 20,000 people worldwide in just three days, brings performance and gaming technology together to explore new ways for the audience, a remote spectator, to experience live theater (Aebischer 21). As live play performances and readings continually crowd virtual platforms, theater is undergoing a radical shift from stage to screen and cyberspace. However, will these new formats survive in the post-pandemic times? © 2022 Universita degli Studi di Milano. All rights reserved.

Becoming anonymous: how strict COVID-19 isolation protocols impacted ICU patients.

In this article, I provide phenomenological reflections on patients' experiences of undergoing extreme isolation protocols while admitted to Intensive Care Units [ICU] during the first wave of COVID-19. Based on observation studies from within the patient isolation rooms and retrospective, in-depth phenomenological interviews with patients, I characterize this exceptional experience as one of becoming anonymous. To illustrate this, I start by establishing a perspective on embodied existence as constituted on a scale between anonymous embodiment and being enrooted into a personal niche. Against the backdrop of this framework, I illustrate how being admitted to the ICU under strict isolation protocols produced extraordinary experiences of becoming anonymous. Sources of the anonymization were: (1) Mechanical expropriation, pacification and disownership of the visceral-kinaesthetic body; (2) Objectification; (3) Spatial and intercorporeal anonymity (4) Surrealism: the intermingling of objective impressions and dream-like interpretations. Finally, I illustrate how anonymization induced an experience of embodiment as raw materiality, confronting the patient with what Martin Heidegger called the facticity of naked existence. This experience is discussed against Levinas' critique of Heidegger, while I propose that insights from this exceptional case may substantiate Heidegger's account.

Writing with silent bodies: a pandemic play in three scenes

The following text is a play co-written as a response to, and a remembrance of, the experiences during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on writing during lockdown that was meant to make sense of our own experiences as academic labourers and those gained from informal conversations with colleagues. Following the conventions and the sensibilities of theatre, the text demands and offers a (re-)embodiment of voices and affectivities that connected those bodies in a situation in which bodies were absent, yet highly present in their vulnerability. We thus invite the readers to treat the text primarily as a stageable drama rather than an academic paper given unusual form. An introduction that belongs to a more classical academic genre expresses our inspirations and relevant points of reference. A short prose coda hints towards some of the insights we have gained by crafting the play.

"bodies tell stories": On Meaning Making and Trauma in Social Work, Poetry, Pandemics, and Embodied Practice

In my field practicum undergraduate courses, we sit in a circle sharing, listening, and connecting head, hands, and hearts. In so doing, we bring whole selves into our practice. With students struggling with complicated wounds, including police brutality, HIV, hepatitis, and COVID-19, I added a course on trauma-informed practice. The following offers a practice-based reflection. It explores themes of mindfulness, logotherapy, laughter, philosophy, narrative, adventure therapy, and trauma, mixing into a poetics of embodiment. Embodiment brings poetry into practice, connecting trauma theory with humanistic approaches to social work. Embodiment helps practitioners challenge clinical and cultural problems. The question remains: How can educators use embodiment, poetry, and reflection to support practice-and why should they?

Toa and the Wero: The Gang and Community Contract Ko Tū a Waho, ko Rongo a Roto. Tū Outside, Rongo Inside

This article is about the gang-community contract in Aotearoa New Zealand, and asks whether the patch can be used for good. To date, little academic attention has been given to the role that predominantly Māori patched street gangs occupy in their communities or the role that re-Indigenisation plays in the trajectory of community-based work by such groups. Using the wero (challenge) as a metaphor for the gang-community contract, a study of gang membership is applied to assess notions of toa (warrior) and the warrior culture, while asking whether such contemporary expressions and embodiment of toa can be used in the form of gang membership for the betterment of the broader society;essentially using the patch for good. Through the application of two Māori concepts-toa and wero-as metaphor, this article will explore the relationship between contemporary expressions of the toa and the challenges they face in the current climate of socioeconomic inequality and COVID-19. Lastly, this article provides a case study of the Black Power Movement Whakatane chapter to identify processes of re-Indigenisation and the role the patch plays in restoring the mana of marginalised communities.

Wearing face masks impairs dyadic micro-activities in nonverbal social encounter: A mixed-methods first-person study on the sense of I and Thou.

The COVID-19 pandemic has manifold negative consequences for people around the world, of which the psychosocial ones have been rather underrepresented in the public eye. Regarding social distancing measures, there is already some experimental work demonstrating that the use of face masks has detrimental effects on various aspects of social cognition such as emotion reading, face identification, and perceived closeness of persons. However, while these findings provide important clues, they do not shed light on what people experience when interacting in real life in a masked society. Therefore, in critical distance to cognitivist accounts and taking Direct Social Perception (DSP) approaches seriously, we developed a first-person experimental design and conducted a study with thirty-four participants in a dyadic setting with two conditions (without vs. with face mask). Data were analyzed with mixed methods including in-depth qualitative coding at three levels, code relations analyses, and various statistical tests. Results yielded significant differences across conditions at all qualitative levels, comprising, for example, expressive behavior, and, in particular, significant decreases of content-independent, complimentary mental micro-activities. In the context of DSP, we argue in the paper that these activities suggest the constitution of a quasi-sensory modality - conceived as I-Thou sense - that oscillates between strongly and weakly embodied mental activities, as the analyses show. In sum, this study suggests that mask-wearing impairs both functional directions of mental activity in relation to more or less embodied experience and thus intervenes deeply in fundamental processes of social perception and interaction.

‘Getting a grip’? Phenomenological insights into handling work place in London’s Soho

How are working lives shaped by the demands and expectations associated with a particular workplace? And how are work identities enacted to demonstrate a capacity to cope with place-based demands, expectations and associations? Drawing on insights from phenomenological perspectives on space, place and situated experience, particularly Merleau-Ponty's concept of 'grip', and interview data drawn from longitudinal research with men and women working in London's Soho, this article shows how working lives and identities are situated within, and enacted through, practices that involve developing and demonstrating a capacity for place handling. The analysis shows how this is negotiated by those working in iconic locales in which their working lives and identities are shaped by meanings that are both evolving and enduring, and that require them to get and maintain a demonstrable grip on the setting in which they work. In contributing to a growing interest in understanding working lives as situated phenomena, the article challenges the idea that work is increasingly place-less, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the digitalization of work accelerated by it, emphasizing how where work takes place continues to matter to how it is enacted and experienced.