Email address: bmoreland@marjon.ac.uk
Ben’s research interests focus on the ways in which sporting athletes’ bodies and senses are engaged in an ongoing interplay with their selected activity. Ben’s PhD is an interdisciplinary study that draws upon existential phenomenology alongside sociology to explore the often taken for granted experiences of recreational mountain bikers.
The study seeks to question the mind/body dualism and proposes the body operates often independently from the mind during states of euphoria and flow. The implications of the research are that rider’s bodies are central to their lived experience, often pre-cognitively taking over on the trail through habit and unconscious control.
Additionally, explorations of sensual dimensions reveal counters to existing western hierarchies frequently focussed on the optic, in favour of a multisensory experience that does not privilege one specific sensory modality.
Supervisory team
- Dr Daniel Keech (University of Gloucestershire)
- Dr Peter Gaskill (University of Gloucestershire)
- Dr Andrew Pitchford (University of Westminster)