Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding  (ECTU)

Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding is an international research project and training initiative on an embodied approach to thinking. It has won the Rannis Grant of the Icelandic Research Fund, and is conducted in cooperation with the Philosophy Department of the University of Iceland, the Interacting Minds Centre of Aarhus University, the Micro-Phenomenology Laboratory, Paris, the Peace, Justice and Conflict Center, DePaul University cooperate. This approach has also won two European Erasmus + grants, by developing a yearlong training program with 18 webinars and a summer school, and in 2024 a Rannis Excellence Grant. 

• ECTU researches how an embodied and entangled being-in-the-world is the ground from where we think critically and differentiatedly.

• ECTU researchers explore (interact with) an embodied space of felt meaning, in which the fresh precision of situated experiential processes provides the grounds of relevance for meaningful research.

• ECTU explores what embodied experience implies for the practice of creative thinking, in terms of academic practices as well as in terms of educational practices.

The aim of ECTU is to undertake a systematic, thoroughgoing and practical reconsideration of the concept and practice of critical thinking by engaging recent theories and discussions of embodiment in terms of integrating the complexity of feeling and experiential backgrounds in thinking.