HART Associate member, Dr John Hockey of the University of Gloucestershire, recently gave an invited presentation at a conference sponsored by the University of Hamburg, Germany. The conference ‘Thermal Objects: Theorising Temperatures and the Social’, brought together a selection of interdisciplinary scholars from Europe and the USA. The focus coheres with one of HART’s current research interests in lived heat, thermoception and physical cultures, and presentations considered the ways in which temperature has not just physiological but also cultural impact. John’s presentation examined how the culture of distance runners engages with temperature, drawing on ethnographic data and theorised via the framework of sociological phenomenology.
The paper drew on a chapter recently published as: Hockey, J and Allen-Collinson, J (2017) Running a temperature: sociological-phenomenological perspectives on distance running, thermoception and ‘temperature work’, in A C Sparkes (ed), Seeking the Senses in Physical Cultures: Sensual scholarship in action. London: Routledge; a pre-publication copy of which can be found via this link.
