Research.

Overview

My research interests are centred on the nuances exploring the nuances of sensorially perceived relationships with matter (things and stuff) by using qualitative methodologies to document the complexities of individuals’ relationships with the things they choose to integrate into their everyday lives.

Why

Sensory perception is the basis for understanding the world around us. Human olfaction has the ability to affect and generate effects, but is often ignored in our everyday lives. The exceptions are the smells that we choose to bring into our lives. Smells are volatile odourant molecules; they are ephemeral. The spatial, temporal, corporeal and material relationships with the things we perceive can be used as lens to explore our intimate encounters with everyday life.

How

I favour a practice-based approach that integrates mundane and arts-based methods to grasp and render the relational and cultural importance of things through the stories of those who encounter and live with things.

Implications

My work on olfactory relationships, specifically, brings together inter-disciplinary approaches, and contributes to understandings of corporeality, embodiment, materiality, temporality and spatiality.

Contributions

The contributions of this type of work with sensory experience occurring in everyday life through the bodies of those who experience them are far reaching. However, the original contribution settles on the nascent area of communicating sensory experience in creative ways that does not devalue the role of matter whether it is animate or inanimate.

Publications.

Greehy, L. (2017) ‘Thoughts on perfume: luxury and rhythm’, Journal of Consumer Ethics, 1(2): 63-71. Available online: https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org/journal-issues/issue-2/