What is a Walking Research?
Hi, my name is Camilla Brudin Borg and I’m a literary scholar from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. I’m working within the Environmental Humanities and Eco-Critical Literary Studies where I teach and I do research on educational and creative perspectives to approach the environmental and sustainable transformation.
I use walking and reading as my methodology while researching stories of pilgrimages and adventure hiking. I’m also one of the initiators and leaders of the international One by Walking network that was formed in 2020.
One by walking is an interdisciplinary network for researchers interested in explorative walking methodologies and experimental, scientific and art-based work related to walking methods. The members of this network come from all various fields of the performing arts, pedagogy, social science and humanities, and from many places all around the world.
All of us have a documented interest in the connection between bodies, landscape, sustainability, movement, walking and methodological innovation.
As many researchers from the environmental humanities, we work interdisciplinary and in our case it’s also important to meet outside, to walk together, to reflect and to explore how knowledge is produced. Scholarship about mobility and walking have in the past several years become important across many different disciplines and fields of research.
Walking as a research is a dynamic crossroad where scientists have the opportunity to discuss a phenomenon and a practice that is a concrete activity and as such very important in very very many fields and areas in research as well as in daily life for most people. But walking is also a symbol that shows something fundamental about humans and their relationship
Walking research has developed as a methodological framework that is becoming more and more focal to understanding and resolving environmental challenges of the current day.
