Bio:
I am a professor for theories and concepts of social work at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences North-Rhine Westphalia, Münster (Germany), working on topics such as material gerontology, sustainability in later life, gender-based violence and violence against older adults. I have a special interest in developing new qualitative methods to capture the human and more-than-human world.
Grant supported actions and initiatives:
During the Virtual Mobility I piloted the project “Pottery as an arts-based research method in later life” together with Anna Wanka (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany) and Anna Urbaniak (Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland). The aim was to develop pottery as a haptic, participatory method for ageing studies and participatory research. The pilot comprised (1) a review of literature on arts-based and participatory research in later life; (2) a one-day co-creative pottery workshop with six participants aged 65 and over, of different genders and backgrounds, and (3) data analysis across three analytical perspectives: the process of making, the talk around the object, and the object as data (“potter voice”).
Testimonial:
The pilot confirmed the method’s core premise: pottery as a haptic, arts-based participatory method with older adults, generating a rich multi-format dataset (group discussion, informal interviews, participant observation, photographs of the pottery objects). The novel methodological contribution of haptic participation broadens the empirical repertoire and includes older adults who are typically excluded from methodological frameworks. The pilot also strengthened the cross-country collaboration between Germany and Poland: the team is preparing a joint peer-reviewed article and will present the results at an international conference.