[Commlist] cfp: Interfaceing 2025 – Embodied Experience, Emotions, and Creativity

*Interfaceing 2025 – Embodied Experience, Emotions, and Creativity*

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*

September 17-19, 2025, at Doğuş University, Istanbul, Turkey.


Organized by Prof. Dr. Barış ÇOBAN (Doğuş University, Turkey)

& Associate Prof. Dr. Charlène CLONTS (Kyushu University, Japan)

*INTERFACE* invites scholars, practitioners, and artists to the 2025 
*INTERFACE*ing conference to explore the dynamic interrelations between 
the body, mind, emotions, and creativity across disciplines. This 
gathering aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue spanning literature, 
linguistics, media, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and the arts.

The conference theme is grounded in phenomenology and the thought of the 
rhizome, emphasising embodied perception and nonlinear models of 
creativity. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s /Phenomenology of 
Perception/, we aim to understand perception as an active, bodily 
experience that shapes consciousness and our engagement with the world. 
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “phenomenal field” underlines how the self 
and the world are entangled through lived, embodied interactions. This 
embodied perspective is further expanded by Gilles Deleuze and Félix 
Guattari’s idea of the “rhizome” – a non-hierarchical model that views 
reality as a network of ongoing, interconnected processes. Their theory 
invites us to rethink identity, creativity, and perception as fluid, 
relational, and emergent, challenging traditional dualisms and fixed 
structures.

In this light, creativity and emotions are not just abstract outputs but 
lived, embodied engagements with the world. Art, literature, media, and 
performance are thus understood both as expressions and as sites of 
embodied experience. Artists like Paul Cézanne, for example, demonstrate 
through their techniques how perception is bodily situated and 
subjective. Similarly, contemporary studies investigate the impact of 
emotional regulation, interoception, and somatic practices on creativity 
and resilience. Recent research supports the idea that practices 
integrating body and mind, such as meditation, movement therapy, and 
performance art, not only enhance emotional regulation but also foster 
creative capacities and well-being. These embodied practices are 
increasingly used across educational, clinical, and artistic settings to 
promote holistic human flourishing.

The conference also welcomes explorations of the “affective turn” in 
contemporary theory, as introduced by Clough and Halley (2007). This 
approach highlights how affect–preconscious bodily intensities shape 
human experience and social relations. It foregrounds bodily forces and 
emotional responses as central to cognition, social behaviour, and 
creativity. As technologies mediate more aspects of life, how affect and 
embodiment are shaped by digital and biotechnological systems also 
become crucial areas for investigation.

Topics for consideration might include (but are not limited to):

  * The affective turn about creativity and embodied cognition
  * Intersections between somatic practices and emotional resilience
  * Artistic or media practices that embody or theorise perception
  * The role of mindfulness, interoception, and body-based therapies
  * The impact of digital technologies on affect, body, and creativity
  * Cross-disciplinary methods for exploring embodied experience

  Proposals for panels (instructions here 
<https://interface.org.tw/index.php/if/pages/view/INTERFACEing2025Panel>) 
or individual papers of 25 minutes or less (instructions here 
<https://interface.org.tw/index.php/if/pages/view/INTERFACEing2025Paper>) 
should be submitted to* both* Prof. Charlène Clonts 
((clonts.charlene.248 /at/ m.kyushu-u.ac.jp) 
<mailto:(clonts.charlene.248 /at/ m.kyushu-u.ac.jp)>)* and *Prof. Barış Çoban 
((bcoban /at/ dogus.edu.tr) <mailto:(bcoban /at/ dogus.edu.tr)>) by *July 30, 2025*

  The papers should be presented in any of the following languages: 
English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

  The conference will take place on September 17-19, 2025, at Doğuş 
University, Istanbul, Turkey. It is organised as a physical face-to-face 
conference; however, it will also be possible to present and participate 
remotely.

  Papers presented at the conference can be submitted for publication 
in the Special Topic issues of *INTERFACE* to be published in 2026 
(subject to double-blind peer review).

*INTERFACE* would like to thank Istanbul Doğuş University, 
Turkey (Department of Communication Sciences), Kyushu University, 
Japan (Department of Language and Literature), Taiwan National 
University, Taiwan (Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures), 
Trier University, Germany (Centre for Advanced Studies "Poetry in 
Transition”), Kobe University, Japan (Graduate School of Humanities), 
and Seoul National University, Korea (Institute of Classical Studies) 
for their kind support and cooperation in organising this conference.

For the extended version of CFP:

https://interface.org.tw/index.php/if/pages/view/CallforPapers-INTERFACEing2025EXT 


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