EcoSENSES · The Sensory Ecology of Water: A Multisensory Anthropological Study of Outdoor Swimming in the Arctic
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-10-01 → 2025-10-31
- EU contribution
- €191,760
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The Sensory Ecology of Water: A Multisensory Anthropological Study of Outdoor Swimming in the Arctic
Outdoor swimming in Norway has surged since the COVID 19 pandemic, promoted as a way to improve health, social connection, and a sense of belonging to nature. Yet most research on “blue spaces” focuses on warmer climates and treats wellbeing as a purely human concern. This leaves a gap in understanding how Arctic waters—and the living beings and materials within them—shape everyday relationships between people, environments, and the more than human world. EcoSENSES responds by exploring how sensory immersion in cold water reconfigures wellbeing as shared and relational rather than individual and clinical. It uses friluftsliv—Norway’s philosophy of outdoor life—as a lens for navigating safety, sustainability, and conviviality with waters, coastlines, and nonhuman others. Objectives: • Build a theoretical model of human–environmental wellbeing grounded in Arctic swimming practices and sensory knowledge. • Generate practical recommendations for safe, inclusive water recreation that respect human and more than human needs. • Develop collaborative open science methods for co creating multisensory knowledge. • Consolidate the researcher’s leadership in sensory anthropology through teaching and supervision. By combining anthropology, environmental humanities, and sport studies, EcoSENSES shows how simple practices—short dips, coastal walks, seasonal rituals—can foster resilience and ethical relations with place. Expected impacts include stronger evidence based water policy, advances in open science, and climate aware action in swimming communities. The scale spans local sites, regional strategies, and European agendas on sustainability and public health.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
My project aims to re-think human-more-than-human interconnectedness by examining entangled relationships between arctic waters, the senses, and place. As a community of practice, outdoor swimming in Norway provides a unique lens through which to examine a sharing in the sensible grounded-in holistic planetary wellbeing. Following the global COVID-19 pandemic and wellbeing crisis, practitioners, tourism agencies, and popular media outlets have lauded outdoor swimming as a therapeutic cure for human health, wellbeing, and for a perceived lack of connection to nature. Examining relational notions of wellbeing in blue-spaces, and stewardship of nature in immersive experiences outdoors, generates novel insights into sensory knowledges and the cultural values of waters in rapidly changing arctic climates. In doing so, this project expands the methodological affordances of anthropology by conjoining participant sensation in qualitative sensory ethnography with discourse analysis and close readings, in the pursuit of three objectives: 1) identify historical and contemporary meanings of Norwegian outdoor recreation (friluftsliv) and wellbeing as presented in and related to outdoor swimming; 2) trace how interactions with water and more-than-human others shape the swimming sensorium; and 3) uncover the potential for sensory ecologies to inform planetary conviviality in water management and competency policies. Sensory approaches used in this project may reveal power relations, local forms of water management and wellbeing resilience, the negotiated use of space, and formation of place-attachment. This examination of how the perceived therapeutic healing practice of outdoor swimming can be mobilized to include material and ecological strategies for advancing water security and ensuring quality water sources for all Europeans.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101102950
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e508141a37&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50a4b280d&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union