In this talk I will draw on two projects: an ethnography of an urban allotment attended as an enrichment activity by refugee and asylum seekers, and a participatory photovoice project including soundscaping and walking interviews, exploring refugee and asylum seekers self-representation of place, belonging and citizenship. The two projects shed light on the role of sensory and embodied urban place-making in the production of refugee and asylum seekers’ therapeutic landscape experiences. I will draw on observational, as well as visual and sound, data to present three themes: embodied presence; sensory nostalgia and transnationalism and symbolic anthropomorphism of plants. Through these three themes I will discuss the following two questions: 1. What role does the sensory and embodied play in urban encounters of place-based wellbeing for refugee and asylum seekers? 2. In what ways do embodied and sensory therapeutic landscape experiences act as a site for contestation?
ArgO-EMR Seminars Trinity 2023
Wednesdays at 5pm (Weeks 2-3, 5-8) in the Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road
Themes:
Sensory ecologies of therapeutics: Weeks 2-3 and 8
