Sensory Methodologies for Researching Affective Atmospheres in Higher Education Institutions

The presentation reviews methodologies for researching affective encounters in space and reflects on how existing methodologies can be used and developed further for researching spaces of higher education. In particular, we will address methodological routes towards understanding spaces of creativity and reflexivity that emerge from encounters between universities and their environment. While the concept of ”affective atmospheres” (Anderson, 2009, 2014; Michels, 2015; Michels & Steyaert, 2017) has been used for addressing how bodies are moved through encounters in space, empirical research and methodological approaches remain scarce in both the social sciences and architecture. The presentation will contribute to fill this gap by reviewing and developing further methodologies for researching affective atmospheres. In this endeavour, we will draw on ethnographic methodologies that attend to the sensual and emotional experience of space. Our discussion of sensory methods for researching affective atmospheres on university campuses responds to recent calls for exploring the sensory landscapes of universities (Cox, 2017; Pink, 2015). In order to develop an understanding of how new learning encounters emerge, this methodological approach entails participating in, observing and paying attention to sensory experience. The paper yields methodological insights for qualitative approaches to researching affective atmospheres. The contribution is part of the research project “Organizing Spaces of Creativity and Reflexivity (OSCAR)” at the University of Liechtenstein.