VITAL PLACES for mental healing: Therapeutic processes across clinical, virtual and natural sites
Name of applicant
Nete Schwennesen
Title
Professor
Institution
Roskilde University
Amount
DKK 13,000,000
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
The overarching aim of the project is to pioneer novel understandings and a conceptualization of place as an active therapeutic resource in mental healing processes. In doing so, we propose the concept “vitality of place” and highlight its social, material and affective dimensions across clinical, virtual and natural sites.
Why?
The project will add a novel perspective on therapeutic mental healing by highlighting the agentic capacity of place as a potential healing resource in professional interventions. By advancing knowledge of what places “do” in healing processes, the project expands the range of professional responses to mental health challenges and future therapeutic interventions.
How?
By means of sensorial ethnographic fieldwork across clinical, virtual and natural sites, the project team will investigate how the vitality of places, evolves through dynamics comprising material, affective and social dimensions. The project will compare and synthesize the generative mechanisms across therapeutic sites and mental health conditions.