Nomadic concepts

Nomadic concepts – also and perhaps better known as "travelling concepts" – are a heuristic tool and analytical practice for communicating across disciplinary, professional and cultural boundaries through discussing and opposing different understandings and uses of concepts such as identity, space or emotion. It could thus also be called a translation tool.
It was first proposed by Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers in her edited collection D’une science à l’autre: des concepts nomades (1987) where she defines the purpose of concepts that travel between and within the ‚hard’ and ‚soft’ sciences as opening up debates and facilitating invention.

Later, it was Dutch narratologist Mieke Bal who in her book Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (2002) described and indeed demonstrated how working with (and on) concepts in the humanities enables a thoroughly interdisciplinary and intersubjective approach.

The nomadic concepts tool fosters a critical awareness about the potential and limits of a researcher’s disciplinary perspective and theorising. It sharpens her/his conceptual framework, allowing for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary rigour and quality. Understood as ‘mini-theories’ and semantic units in flux, such concepts facilitate exchange, mutual learning and co-development of novel questions and projects both across disciplines and involving non-academic knowledge production.

The following description is based on how the tool was put into practice at the Graduate School of the Humanities and the Social Sciences (link):

1) The facilitator chooses one or several concepts. It/they should be relevant for the collective project and broad enough to be of more or less equal importance to investigations in the various disciplines represented in a project. Examples are: memory, identity, emotion, narrative, performance, hegemony, intentionality, space, …

2) The participants form working groups around each of the concepts. Each working group is responsible for the organisation of a background input and a workshop centred around its concept. As preparation, the working group reads a number of texts that deal with the concept theoretically or apply the concept to a specific context. Among those, 2-3 core texts are chosen that offer points of entry and connection for all the participants.

3) An expert (e.g. the author of one of the core texts) provides the background input (e.g. a lecture) on a concept’s history, including a survey of the most important books and positions. S/he may also zoom in on her/his area of research connected to the chosen concept. Ample time should be provided for discussion.

4) In the workshop, the participants discuss the texts in more detail to specify various understandings and uses of the concept.

5) Then, the members of the working group present their own work, i.e. their project contributions in relation to the concept (or argue why a concept is not relevant to their work or why a different yet possibly similar concept has more analytical power).

6) The expert and the peers give constructive feedback and make suggestions for further reading.

7) Ideally, the working group members immediately incorporate that feedback into their project contributions and concentrate on the integration of knowledge around their chosen concept over the next few weeks/months.

8) It is recommended that the working groups meet regularly after the workshop as well and that the participants present their work in progress to each other in order to get an interdisciplinary ‘quality check’.

The facilitator needs to (1) identify one or several concepts that is of more or less equal importance to the participants; (2) coordinate the working group tasks, and (3) organise a room for the presentation(s) and workshop(s).