Carolien Hermans is an artist-researcher who skillfully navigates the realms of choreography and photography. With a background in dance/choreography from SNDO and DAS choreography, coupled with a pedagogical education from Radboud University, where she graduated cum laude, Carolien has forged her own path in the intersection of art and academia.
In 2023, she defended her artistic PhD research titled ‘Participatory Sense-Making in Physical Play and Dance Improvisation: Drawing Meaningful Connections Between Self, Others and World’ under the guidance of Henk Borgdorff and Eeva Antilla at ACPA (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts), Leiden University.
Throughout her career, Carolien has held junior and senior positions as a lecturer and researcher at institutions such as HKU (University of the Arts Utrecht), Artez Zwolle, Leiden University of Applied Sciences, Radboud University, Utrecht University, and the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Currently, Carolien is a Senior Lecturer in the Bachelor’s program ODM (Music Teachers Department) and the Master’s program Musical Leadership at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. In March 2024, she is appointed as Associate Professor of ‘Musical Learning Cultures’ at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, wherein she endeavors to bridge the gaps between diverse music learning environments in the metropolis Amsterdam, fostering a more equitable approach to music.
She publishes regulary in scientific journals and professional magazines. Her writing oscillates between the academic and the literary realms. Additionally, she has published a children’s book titled ‘Door’ with Clavis.
Driven by a passion for ethical engagement with non-human life, Carolien’s current research encompasses projects such as ‘Imperceptibility, Children’s Play as Animal Becomings’, ‘Fake: Animalism near our Homes’, ‘Performing the Line’, ‘Coast Lines as Transformative Sites’ and ‘The Return of the Sirens’. Through these endeavors, she explores how the arts can foster more compassionate and sustainable relationships with nature. Her work is anchored in ecopedagogies of caring and repairing, seeking to address the urgent ecological challenges facing future generations. How can we respond and take care for next generations of life? She is influenced by process philosophy, phenomenology, and posthumanism – and particularly inspired by the work of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Serres, René ten Bos, Jan Masschelein, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour.
Carolien Hermans currently hosts the ‘Ecopedagogy in the Arts’ group, an international research group of SAR, organized by UniArts in Helsinki. She is also part of the ‘Posthumanism and Education’ group that consists of scholars, teachers, artists – in fact anyone who cares about life, nature and education is welcome. This group is initiated by Floor van Basten.
Carolien has a specific interest in artistic research. Traditionally there’s a friction, even a gap, between logical empiricism and the artistic domain. Logical empiricism deliberately seeks distance by capturing the world in measurable and objective terms. Artistic research often focuses on proximity, on intimate knowledge. In the (mutual) touching and being touched of the art(ist) and the world, knowledge emerges that is affective, embodied, situated, local, and (more-than) human. A central concept in Carolien’s work is ‘participatory sense-making’ (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007): the way we relate to the world through our intimate senses, through the body, and through movement.