Living Between Worlds, Thinking Beyond Categories: A Transdisciplinary Gathering within The OU

What is it to be between worlds, between spaces, between times? How should we make sense of experiences and expressions of the in-between? It is now commonplace for researchers and practitioners across many disciplines and fields to grapple with subject matters and circumstances that are described as indeterminate, ambiguous, emergent, volatile, messy, uncertain and ambivalent. To address such issues we find a proliferation of concepts including thresholds, boundaries, marginality, liminality, hybridity, complexity, transversality, contingency, duration and emergence, and we find a growing appetite for modes of thought and practice that can follow these subject matters as they spill out across, over and between disciplinary boundaries.

This colloquium will bring together current research from three Open University Faculties (FASS, WELS and FBL) whose work addresses the between worlds issue. The day will be structured into three blocks of short papers, and each block will be followed by 30 minutes discussion time. The event is primarily an internal (OU) event, but those who are not from the OU and wish to come along are welcome but should contact Paul Stenner.

This event is FREE, please register here.

Schedule

11.00 – 11.05 Stephanie Taylor (FASS)  Chair: Structure of the day

11.05 – 11.15 Paul Stenner (FASS) Introduction: Living between worlds, thinking between categories

11.15 – 11.30 Steve Pile (FASS) Matters between Life and Death

11.30 – 11.45 Jo Brewis (FBL) The inbetween space of menopause in the workplace

11.45 – 12.00 Charles Barthold (FBL) - Working between Cultures: the postcolonial experience of the labour process

12.00 – 12.30 Discussion

12.30 – 1.15 lunch

1.15 – 1.30 Paul-François Tremlett (FASS) Re-Thinking Religion with the Rhizome and the Body-Without-Organs

1.30 – 1.45 Suzanne Newcome (FASS) The In-between Worlds of Yogis: Body Jumping, Immortality and Kayakalpa practices

1.45 – 2.00 Sophie Watson (FASS) City water matters: cultures, practices and ‘in between’ entanglements of urban water.

2.00 – 2.15 Rebecca L. Jones (WELS)  Reimagining between worlds? Feminist visions of personal ageing 

2.15 – 2.45 Discussion (and coffee)

2.45 – 3.00 Darren Langdridge (FASS) Not less than human: animal transformations in the puppy play community

3.00 – 3.15 Lindsay O’Dell (WELS) Interdisciplinarity and reimagining development through time: between disciplines, between times

3.15 – 3.30 Steve Brown (FBL) The atmosphere of the secure psychiatric ward

3.30 – 4.30 Discussion and future directions.

See the set of abstracts for all the talks.