Creative Practice and Embodied Narratives: Transdisciplinary Inquiry Through the Body, Story, and System

By Barbara Doran

This book distils thirty years of creative practice into a rigorous inquiry that bridges artmaking, somatic intelligence, and systems thinking. Rooted in the author's concept of Embodied Matter Exploration (EME), it positions creativity as cultural metabolism, where material, memory, and body co-compose meaning. Each chapter unfolds around an artwork as theory, method, and intervention. Resisting fragmentation, the book integrates autoethnography, semiotics, and living systems thinking.

Academic literature is treated as a dialogical companion. By participating in meaning making and interpretation, readers gain new perceptions of self, nature, and society, and develop critical reflections to challenge pressing issues such as social injustice, environmental sustainability, and technology's shaping impacts. A thought-provoking read for those interested in systems theory, anthropology, health psychology, neuroscience, and ecology, this practice-led and autoethnographic work opens new paths to possibility studies and creative research.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3032011973
• ISBN13: 9783032011978
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 352 Pages