What forms of knowledge emerge when sweat is not only an object but an epistemic operator? What can sweat reveal about bodies, atmospheres, and relations that remains inaccessible to distanced observation? This workshop explores sweat as a paradigmatic phenomenon through which the ‘lower senses’, particularly smell and touch, come into focus.
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© Mariela Sancari
How can we study what is sensed rather than seen, felt rather than spoken, measured yet lived? How can sweat serve as a methodological entry point for researching the so-called ‘lower senses’, including touch, smell, taste, and thermoception, as embodied modes of knowing?
This workshop places sweat at its centre, not as an isolated object of study but as a paradigmatic and relational phenomenon. Sweat foregrounds heat, humidity and proximity; it condenses questions of embodiment and atmosphere, of labour, medicine, and aesthetics. As a substance that moves across and beyond the boundaries of the skin, sweat also invites us to think with material-semiotic figures such as porosity or leakiness. These figures destabilise bounded notions of the body and draw attention to processes of transmission. By taking sweat seriously as a method, we open up broader reflections on sensory research beyond the visual and the discursive.
This becomes particularly urgent in the context of climate change and shifting thermal regimes, as bodily sensations such as overheating or stickiness emerge as central yet elusive sites of knowledge production. What kinds of knowledge become possible when sweat is not only an object but an epistemic operator? And which epistemological challenges emerge when sensory research can no longer rely on distance?
The workshop is co-organised by Elena Beregow, Christopher Kirschner and Tamara Mercante Thierauf, members of the research group ‘Sweat – Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming’.
Arrival, welcome and lunch
Introduction
Elena Beregow, University Alliance Ruhr (Germany)
13:45
Blood, Butter and Deep Cellars
Karolina Sobecka, Berlin/Basel (Germany/Switzerland)
14:35
The Human Still: Perspiration, Smell, and the Limits of Language
Will Tullett, University of York (UK)
Coffee break
15:50
Tracing Sweaty Emotions: The Psycho-Galvanometer, Film, and the Desire for Emotional Decipherability
Tamara Mercante Thierauf, University Alliance Ruhr (Germany)
16:40
Anyone Else…? Testing the Normalness of Sweat
Rachel Plotnick, Indiana University Bloomington (USA) via Zoom
Break
Moderation: Elena Beregow
Archives of Sweat: Notes on Method
Amber Musser, CUNY Graduate Center (USA)
Conference Dinner
Good morning and coffee
09:15
Sweaty Ethnography, Discomfort, and Intersubjectivity
Julie Archambault, Concordia University (Canada)
10:05
Where Sweat is Meant to be: Practices and Materialities of Perspiration in Indoor Cycling Studios
Christopher Kirschner, University Alliance Ruhr (Germany)
Coffee break
Moderation: Alina Wandelt, KWI Essen (Germany)
11:20
Singapore's Thermoregulation: Sweaty Thinking, Porous City-Making
Ed Charlton, Queen Mary University of London (UK)
12:10
The More-than-Human Politics of Sweat
Hannah Della Bosca, University of Sydney (Australia)
Lunch
Closing Artistic Intervention: Tracing Sweat
Moderation: Tamara Mercante Thierauf
14:00
Wet Images. The Emergence of Sweat in a System of Inscription
Mariela Sancari, Barcelona (Spain)
Closing Remarks
End of conference
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© UDE / Fabian Strauch
Prof. Elena Beregow
Junior Professor | Research Group 'Sweat - Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming'
Phone: +49 201 183 65 66
E-mail: elena.beregow@college-uaruhr.de
Elena Beregow studied sociology in Göttingen, Hamburg, and Copenhagen and completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg with a dissertation on thermal figures in social theory, focusing on fermentation as both a sociological concept and a material practice. From 2020 to 2025 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. Her research is situated at the intersection of sociological theory and cultural sociology, with a particular interest in the sociology of the senses, metaphors, microbes, and the social dimensions of temperature. She also explores sociological writing and theorising, as well as pop culture, affects, and atmospheres.
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© eventfotograf.in
Christopher Kirschner
Doctoral Researcher | Research Group 'Sweat - Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming'
Phone: +49 201 183 65 64
Christopher Kirschner is a doctoral researcher in the research group 'Sweat - Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming' as of May 2025. He studied sociology at the University of Hamburg from 2016 to 2024. In his Master's thesis, he conducted an (auto-)ethnographic study on practical mediation and incorporation processes as well as the development of a practical sense of the game in Rugby Union. His current research focuses on the ethnographic study of physical and practical senses and the social conditions of heat and sweat perception in sport and wellness cultures.
Tamara Mercante Thierauf
Doctoral Researcher | Research Group 'Sweat - Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming'
Phone: +49 201 183 65 65
Tamara Mercante Thierauf is a doctoral researcher in the research group ‘Sweat – Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming’ as of August 2025. She holds a Bachelor's degree in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and a Master's degree in Science and Technology Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research explores sweating with a focus on the entanglements of bodies, data infrastructures, and global warming. She is particularly interested in sweat-sensing technologies, examining both their materiality and the infrastructures they rely on, as well as how practices of datafying sweat shape experiences of selfhood, health, and emotional legibility.