hanne de jaegher

loving and knowing

“participatory sense-making is a form of healing” – Rebecca Todd

Linguistic Bodies (2018, MIT Press).
EA Di Paolo, EC Cuffari & H De Jaegher

Cover of the book Linguistic Bodies. On a beige background there is a figure that looks like an exclamation mark, based on an ink drawing by Vasily Kandinsky.

Denken over liefde (2018, Letterwerk).

about

Paradoxical practices of letting be

About

Hanne is a leading thinker in the enactive approach. Based on her D.Phil and together with Ezequiel Di Paolo, she introduced the theory of participatory sense-making. Its influence and applications across the cognitive sciences, philosophy, social sciences, psychiatry, neuroscience, education, and the arts can be traced here.

At one time a tenured associate professor of philosophy, she is currently building a practice of interdependent writing, researching, teaching, and mentoring/advising/consulting/counseling — finding the connecting moves, in short.

She offers paradoxical practices, office hours and an open studio for participatory sense-making, workshops woven through with experiential-conceptual wonder. Watch this space, as they say.

Hanne obtained her D.Phil. (2007) at the University of Sussex and has training in several dialogical and interpersonal practices. Originally from Belgium, she studied in Brussels (BE), Brighton (UK), and worked in Heidelberg (DE), Donostia (ES), Vancouver (CA), and now lives in the East Kootenays, Canada, on the unceded, ancestral, traditional territories of the Ktunaxa.

speaking — whereabouts

Power and Care, May 2026
Mind & Life Europe
Barcelona, ES


bookings

Hanne is available for presentations, writing, courses, workshops, consulting, mentoring and advising, online and worldwide.

Books

Cover of the book Linguistic Bodies. On a beige background there is a figure that looks like an exclamation mark, based on an ink drawing by Vasily Kandinsky.

Linguistic Bodies (2018, MIT Press). Di Paolo, Cuffari & De Jaegher

Denken over liefde (2018, Letterwerk). De Jaegher

Writings

—between theory and intimacy

  • Ja

    These are the days, ten years ago, when my father was dying. My brother sends me a message. He is putting the music mix online that he made for and played at Papa’s funeral. ”I keep on wondering if I should share… As these things go“ (we both know that we both know eternal doubt…

  • In(to) practice — participatory sense-making —

    My husband’s nephew and his wife are coming to visit tonight, and I was — as I usually do — practicing in my head possible dialogues that might spin out. Doing this today helped me formulate something I’ve been trying to say for a long time. So, I was imagining them asking me, since we’d…

  • Information and data will never deliver creativity

    Life, information, and the search for meaning New piece out on IAI news: Many claim informational systems cannot be truly creative in the way human artists are because they lack human emotion and originality. But philosopher and cognitive scientist, Hanne De Jaegher, argues the issue is deeper still: AI is not alive. It has no…

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