5th July feedback from #IHSRC37 2018

Talking phenomenology

Gemma and Rachel went to the 37^th meeting of the International Human Science Research Conference at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina at the end of June – and we thought the group may like to hear how it went.

The theme of the conference was: Phenomenology and Dialogue: Exploring questions of language, inclusivity, and accessibility

I (Rachel) first went to this conference in 1999 when I was doing my PhD. It was in Sheffield and it was my first conference experience. My abiding memory when presenting my IPA study of witnessing violence was of a certain esteemed member of the IHSRC & Duquesne alumni asking me: “where’s the phenomenology in that?!”.

It got better! I now know said well-known alumni and am much better placed to argue my case. This year was different. It’s about my 7^th time at this conference (Gemma’s first) and things have shifted somewhat. There is still lots of phenomenology, which is why it feels like my methodological and perhaps ontological home, but there is also a lot of applied healthcare research. Our Danish and Norweigan colleagues now make up a good proportion of delegates and lead the way in terms of their in-depth phenomenological research with healthcare professionals, patients and their families. In fact, there are many new faces from around the North America, Europe, and Japan. In the debrief session at the end of conference, there was a notable sense of openness and colleagiateness in the way the conference was led and how it was received (although it hasn’t always been that way – I refer you to my early experience).

This openness and friendliness was led by example by Christine Sorrell Dinkins who organised and hosted the conference at Wofford College; such an important part of the conference experience. Christine and others represented philosophy and so as well as psychologists and healthcare practitioners playing around with creative methods for generating lived experience accounts, the philosophers challenged our pre-conceptions and stretched our minds with questions challenging the very nature of the concepts we work with each day.

You can see the twitter feed #ihsrc37 for full details.

The most significant things I took away from the conference were:

·         Creative ideas to integrate into my next research bid exploring experiences of phronesis (practical wisdom), especially ways of fostering phronesis in professional learning environments;

·         Inspiration for how we might explore ontological questions through art and music;

·         Thinking about dialogical approaches to phenomenology;

·         Paying attention to the research phenomenon within accounts of lived experience;

      Spending time with like-minded friends and colleagues.