Abstracts will be added on April 2016. Kristina Eichel (Köln University/ Brown University) Katariina Mäkelä (University of Tampere) Marianne Hedegaard (University of Copenhagen) Ronald Purser (San… Read more “Abstracts”
Category: Yleinen
Visiting Tampere
About Tampere and the University of Tampere
University of Tampere
The University of Tampere is a culturally-committed higher education institution with the social mission of educating visionaries who understand the world and change it. The profile of the University of Tampere accentuates the university’s multifaceted research and education on society and health.
In its research, the University addresses the central issues in contemporary society. By providing critical knowledge and education, the university helps people and societies to improve their health and their cultural, social and economic well-being.
The basic values of the University are academic freedom, creativity and social responsibility. This means that everyone has an equal right to learn, to acquire knowledge, to participate and to make an impact on society.
TAMPERE
Tampere, the home city of the University, is the third biggest city in Finland. Tampere has a population of more than 220,000 while there are close to half a million people in the greater Tampere Region. Tampere is Finland’s third largest city as well as the largest inland city in the Nordic countries.
Finlayson
Tampere has a monumental industrial history: the Finlayson cotton mill was the first large-scale industrial enterprise in Finland and it was in fact in fact in Finlayson’s factory hall that the first electric light in the Nordic countries was lit.
Pispala & Pyynikki
Today Pispala has a vibrant artivist atmosphere and has much in kin with other bohemianarts areas such as Užupis, Montmartre, Greenwich Village or Freetown Christiania.
Pispala houses the oldest still active public sauna in Finland. Rajaportin sauna began its operation in 1906 and is currently owned by the City of Tampere. However it is run by a local Pispala Sauna Association (Pispalan saunayhdistys ry.).[1]
Pispala currently houses the Pispala Centre of Contemporary Arts at Hirvitalo which organises various events both outdoors in various places around the suburb and within their gallery situated upon “moose street,” Hirvikatu. It is run by the Pispala Cultural Association
Also found in Pispala is Kurpitsatalo (“Pumpkin House”) a community gardening project that celebrates the cycle of the year with traditional pagan festivals, music and also has various allotments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pispala
Market Hall, Tammela market Square
Even the earliest of birds can get a yummy crum or two to eat in Tampere! In Tammela district, close to Tammela market square, a versatile breakfast is served at Café Aamurusko. The morning paper and the café’s comfy couch are a good combination to start the day with.
If you like to taste the local life, you should head towards the Market Hall (Kauppahalli) for a breakfast, where you can find many cafés. While enjoying your brekkie – maybe some oat meal – you get a glimpse of the local atmosphere, on the corridors of the 100 year-old indoor market.
If you happen to be a history enthusiast, we can warmly recommend the breakfast in the café Amurin Helmi, where after eating you can continue to the attached Amuri Museum of Workers’ Housing, the historical quarters offering a time travel to the history of the city.
Public Sauna experiences
We can visit at Rauhaniemi’s Sauna or Rajaportin sauna, if participants are interested:
http://www.rauhaniemi.net/info/auf-deutch/
http://www.rajaportinsauna.fi/index.en.php
Miinan Savusauna is located in Hämeenkyrö, appr. 30 km from Tampere and it’s a real treat for the more experienced sauna-goers who appreciate something new – top it off with peat treatments or cupping therapy and you’ll get very close to the most traditional experience of the Finnish sauna culture!
Night life
Klubi is situated in the Tulli area and it’s famous for its Saturday morning breakfast club, where a versatile breakfast buffet is served to the tables while DJ guests take care of the programme.
Telakka
The Plevna Brewery Pub & Restaurant:
http://www.plevna.fi/?page_id=178
Pispala’s Pulteri
http://www.pispalanpulteri.fi/fi/
You will find more information about Tampere and its tourist attractions from Visit Tampere tourist information.
Welcome
Theorising on Social and Embodied Aspects of Contemplative Practices An international Workshop University of Tampere, Finland 13-14.7. 2016 What distinct modes –affective, gendered, economical, activist, bodily,… Read more “Welcome”
Abstracts
Abstract’s Kristina Eichel (Brown University) & Hana Sysalova (Univesrity of Warwick): Critique on Measurements of “trait” Mindfulness The construct of mindfulness in the current research is… Read more “Abstracts”
Registration
Registration: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg_2016/contemplativepractices2016 Conference fee (VAT 0 %) is 30€ and it includes: conference programme and materials lunches and coffees The conference fee is to be paid when… Read more “Registration”
Travelling and accomodation
Travelling to Tampere Tampere is easily accessible. It is located in Southern Finland, 175 km north of Helsinki. There are excellent flight connections to Finland from all… Read more “Travelling and accomodation”
Keynote speakers
Professor Ronald Purser -San Francisco State University
Ronald Purser, Ph.D. is a professor of management at San Francisco State University where he has taught the last eighteen years in both the MBA and undergraduate business programs. Prior to moving to San Francisco, he taught at Loyola University of Chicago. He received his doctorate in organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Purser is former chair of the Academy of Management’s Organizational Development and Change division.
Co-author of five books including, 24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society (Stanford University Press, 2007), and over 60 academic journal articles and book chapters, his recent writings critically examine Buddhism’s encounter with modernity, capitalism and individualism, particularly in corporate settings.
Dr. Purser began his Buddhist training beginning in 1981 at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley. In 1985, he was a student at the Cleveland Zen Center under Koshin Ogui Sensei who had been Shunryu Suzuki’s personal assistant in the early 1960’s. He has studied with numerous Zen teachers and Tibetan lamas, is now an ordained Dharma instructor in the Korean Zen Buddhist Taego order. His recent articles include Mindfulness in the Boardroom (Tricycle), White Privilege and the Mindfulness Movement, Confessions of a Mind-wandering MBSR Student: Remembering Social Amnesia; Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness; Revisiting Mindfulness: A Buddhist-Based Conceptualization (with J. Milillo at Harvard); Zen and the Art of Organizational Maintenance; Zen and the Creative Management of Dilemmas (with Albert Low); Deconstructing Lack: A Buddhist Perspective on Egocentric Organizations; and A Buddhist-Lacanian Perspective on Lack. His articles Beyond McMindfulness (with David Loy), Mindfulness’ Truthiness Problem (with Andrew Cooper), and Corporate Mindfulness Is Bullsh*t (with Edwin Ng) went viral in the Huffington Post and Salon.com in 2013, 2014 and 2015. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Content and Social Engagement which will be published by Springer in 2016.
Associate Professor Suvi Salmenniemi – University of Turku
Suvi Salmenniemi is associate professor of sociology at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research interests include therapeutic engagements and wellbeing, political sociology, cultural studies, feminist research and social inequalities. She is currently leading two research projects looking into therapeutic practices and knowledge: “The Puzzle of the Psyche: Therapeutic Knowledge and Selfhood in a Comparative Perspective” (funded by Kone Foundation, 2014-2016), and “Tracking the Therapeutic: Ethnographies of Wellbeing, Politics and Inequality” (funded by the Academy of Finland, 2015-2019). Her ongoing research is an ethnographic project examining therapeutic engagements in the fields of complementary and alternative health, coaching and self-improvement. More specifically, she is interested in how these therapeutic engagements are experienced and signified; the conceptions and strategies of politics and wellbeing articulated in these engagements; and the processes of inequality at play in them.
She is the author of Democratization and gender in contemporary Russia (Routlegde, 2008). Her work has also appeared in Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, International Sociology and European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Lecturer Steven Stanley – Cardiff University
Steven Stanley, Ph.D., works as a Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom. He is a social psychologist interested in the critical and qualitative study of social life, and teaches mindfulness and Qigong courses and retreats, both inside and outside of the university. He has practised meditation since 2000. He is particularly interested in the potentials of early Pāli Buddhist ideas and practices, as well as modern retreat practice, for potentially reorienting our relationship to life in capitalism. In his research, he has investigated historical changes in meanings of mindfulness and meditation, ethics and politics of the mindfulness movement, mindfulness meditation as a psychosocial research methodology, interactional aspects of ‘inquiry’ sequences in mindfulness courses, rhetoric of promotion in mindfulness self-help books, and pluralism in mindfulness-based mental health care interventions. His teaching explores mindfulness and socially engaged Buddhism as styles of contemplative education for social science and Social Work.
Associate Professor John Williams – Yale University
John William’s academic work so far has focused on international histories of technological/media innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. He recently published book, The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (Yale University Press, 2014), examines the role of technological discourse in representations of Asian/American aesthetics in late-nineteenth and twentieth century film and literature. The book won the 2015 Harry Levin Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association.Williams also just published a new essay in Critical Inquiry titled “World Futures” (see video and other links about this article here) which forms part 1 of a manuscript I am working on titled The Oracles of World Time.
Special invited speakers:
Dr Catherine Wikholm – Clinical Psychologist, National Health Service (NHS), UK
Dr Catherine Wikholm is a Clinical Psychologist registered with the Health Care and Professions Council (HCPC) and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society (BPS). She completed her undergraduate degree in Philosophy 
and Theology at Oxford University, before embarking on her psychology training and gaining a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology, Masters in Forensic Psychology and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Catherine was previously employed by HM Prison Service where she worked with young offenders on reducing re-offending behaviour. She went on to work alongside Dr Miguel Farias at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, on a randomised controlled trial that looked at the psychological effects of yoga and meditation with prisoners. The findings of this research study sparked the idea for the book ‘The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?’, which she co-wrote with Miguel while completing her doctorate. Since publication, their exploration of the science of meditation and its potential to bring about personal change has gained considerable national and international media attention. Catherine works as a Clinical Psychologist in a NHS child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) in London, UK.
David Forbes – Associate Professor in the School of Education at Brooklyn College/CUNY
David Forbes, PhD (U.C. Berkeley), LMHC, is Associate Professor in the School Counselingprogram in the School of Education at Brooklyn College/CUNY and affiliate faculty in the 
Urban Education doctoral program at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He is co-editor of Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement (in press, Springer, 2016). He was a co-recipient of a higher education program grant from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and wrote Boyz 2 Buddhas: Counseling Urban High School Male Athletes in the Zone (Peter Lang, 2004) about counseling and practicing mindfulness meditation with a Brooklyn high school (American) football team. Forbes teaches critical and integral approaches to mindfulness and writes on the social and cultural context of mindfulness in education including the online articles, “Occupy Mindfulness” and “They Want Kids to be Robots” on neoliberalism in education. He consults with schools on developing integral mindfulness programs and practices meditation with a group from the New York Insight Meditation Center.
- Image courtesy of Timo Klemola
Program
13.7.2016 Main building, 2nd floor, room D10b 09.00 Registration and coffee 09.15 Optional Meditation and somatic exercise taught by Docent Timo Klemola 10.00… Read more “Program”
