Hanne de Jaegher

Hanne de Jaegher

Hanne De Jaegher (DPhil, 2007, University of Sussex) is a philosopher of cognitive science, working to better understand how we think, work, play—basically, live and love—together. She has been developing the theory of intersubjectivity called participatory sense-making. Grounded in enactive cognitive science, dynamical systems theory, and phenomenology, this theory is being applied across academic and practical disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychiatry, architecture, psychology, the social sciences, music, education, various forms of therapy, the arts, and understanding autism. Hanne’s interest is not only in scientifically understanding how we participate in social interactions and how this changes us, but also in helping us become better at understanding each other, especially across differences. Her latest project brings this together in the idea of an engaged—even engaging—epistemology, which understands knowing as based in the ongoing existential tensions of loving. With Ezequiel Di Paolo and Elena Cuffari, she co-authored Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity Between Life and Language (2018, MIT Press). De Jaegher is Associate Professor (Research) in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Visiting Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, and 2021–22 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia.