Short Abstract:

This workshop will facilitate researching and working with dreams across cultures, using imaginative methods (Edgar 2004). The workshop offers researchers the opportunity to sensitise themselves to indigenous dreamworlds, core dream interpretative traditions and the role of their own dreams.

Long Abstract:

There are few, if any, dream theory sensitivity, practice and interpretive training programs available in the world for social science researchers. Yet 'dream literacy' has been identified by Tedlock (1991) as a core skill in the study of cultures with significantly different notions of reality and dream compared to the west. Indeed some anthropologists, such as Guedon (1994), have found that dream awareness and sharing was essential to an in-depth study of the culture they studied. This workshop will facilitate working and researching with dreams across cultures, using imaginative methods (Edgar 2004). The workshop offers researchers the collaborative opportunity to experientially sensitise themselves to indigenous dreamworlds, a variety of core dream interpretative traditions and the role of their own dreams in fieldwork and the reflexive dimension of their studies.