Embodied Lives
Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Body
EN⌄
International Colloquium
Programme
Embodied Lives: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Body
While the official language of the conference is English, some papers will be in French, Italian or Spanish, and translations will be available for all participants.
Day 1 — Monday 14 September
14 September 2026
Opening and Plenary Programme
The entire Opening and Plenary Programme will be held in the ICT Auditorium.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 08:30 | Registration |
| 09:10 | Institutional welcome: Rector of the University of Malta |
| 09:20 | Welcome by the Colloquium Convenors |
| Plenary Chair: Charlo Camilleri | |
| 09:30 | David Le Breton Physically Embodying the World [French] |
| 10:15 | Antonio Staglianò Between Biology and Spirituality: Does Faith Pass through the Body? [English] |
| 11:00 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 | Philippe Cornet Illness in Search of Meaning [French] |
| 12:15 | Frederic Vandenberghe Thinking through scars, tissues, and tattoos [English] |
| 13:00 | Lunch |
Parallel Sessions — 14 September PM
| Time | Parallel Session A — Interpreting BodiesReading, Extending, and Reworking David Le Breton · Language: Mixed · ICT Auditorium | Parallel Session B — Moving BodiesWalking, Movement, Sensation, and Embodied Practices · Language: Mixed · ICT Level 0, Block B, Room 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Chaired by Charlo Camilleri | Chaired by Raymond Zammit | |
| 14:30 | Dulce Maria Filgueira de Almeida Donnici Embodiment, Memory, and Reception: David Le Breton’s Sociology of the Body in Brazil [English] | Laura Apolonio [VIDEO] Walking and Drawing the World: The Moving Body as an Aesthetic Practice and Relational Experience [English] |
| 15:00 | Esther Gloria Acosta Suárez Resonances and Reflections on the Anthropological Figure of Whiteness in Le Breton, Based on a Research Study [French] | Giuseppe Reale The Curvature of the Earth: The Philosophy of Walking according to David Le Breton [Italian] |
| 15:30 | Maria Cecilia de Paula Silva Different Bodies that Enchant Science and Education: A Dialogue with the Work of David Le Breton [French] | Alexandru Ofrim and Lucia Terzea-Ofrim Reading while Walking: The Culture of the Body and the Culture of Reading in Greco-Roman Antiquity [English] |
| 16:00 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 16:30 | Margarita Iglesias Saldaña Women’s History and Some Reflections on the Body in David Le Breton [French] | Laurence Rasseneur A Dialogue between Five People with Visual Impairments and the Work of David Le Breton: Sensing the World and In Praise of Walking [French] |
| 17:00 | Nikolas Zammit The Body as Rupture: Reading Adolescent Gender Dysphoria through David Le Breton [English] | Berfin Su Kazakli [VIDEO] Marked by the Pole: Pain, Discipline, and Affectivity in the Construction of the Pole Dancer’s Body in Turkey [English] |
| 17:30 | End of session | End of session |
Social Programme
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 18:00 | Transport to the Three Cities |
| 18:45 | Walk through Isla/Senglea, Bormla/Cospicua and Birgu/Vittoriosa |
| 20:00 | Dinner — not organised |
Day 2 — Tuesday 15 September
15 September 2026
Morning — Parallel Sessions
| Time | Social BodiesIdentity, Norms, and the Cultural Making of Embodied Lives · Language: English · ICT Auditorium | Vulnerable BodiesDisability, Illness, and the Politics of Embodied Dependence · Language: English · ICT Level 0, Block B, Room 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Chaired by Carlo Calleja | Chaired by Dorianne Buttigieg | |
| 09:00 | Alex Almeida Reis and Ana Paula Bittencourt Okamoto The Body as the Last Refuge of Subjectivity: Prison Tattoos, Embodiment, and Lived Experience [English] | Claire Azzopardi Lane Women with Disabilities, Violence, and the Politics of the Body in Malta [English] |
| 09:30 | Gengfan Chen Menstruation-Related Euphemisms among Chinese Women in Migratory Contexts [English] | Amy Camilleri Zahra Metaphors of the Disabled Body: Social Representations of Women with Disabilities [English] |
| 10:00 | Alison Fixsen The Disordered Body in Late Modernity [English] | Rossella Bo Bodies that Speak: Narrative Transformations and Processes of Subjectivation in Psychoanalytic Practice with Patients with Disabilities [English] |
| 10:30 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | Lionel Obadia Augmented and Robotised Bodies: “Farewell to the Body” or “Welcome to the Cyborg”? [English] | Marzia Rossi The Protection of People with Disabilities in the Italian Legal System: Reflections on the Reform concerning the “Individual, Personalised and Participatory Life Plan” as a Right of People with Disabilities [English] |
| 11:30 | Raymond Zammit “A Body You Have Prepared for Me”: The Body between Gift and Project [English] | Antonio Cristian Saraiva Paiva The Family as Storytellers of Illness: Toward a Lay Hermeneutics of Alzheimer’s Disease [English] |
| 12:00 | End of session | End of session |
Cultural Programme
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 12:15 | Lunch — Maltese street food |
| 13:00 | Transport to Valletta |
| 13:30 | Guided walk — Parliament Building, Upper Barrakka Gardens and Auberge de Castille |
| 14:15 | Visit to St John’s Co-Cathedral, including Caravaggio’s The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist |
| 16:00 | Transport back to the University |
Evening — Parallel Sessions
| Time | Painful BodiesPain, Dissociation, and the Reconfiguration of Embodied Selfhood · Language: English · ICT Auditorium | Caring BodiesMedicine, Personhood, and the Practices of Care · Language: Italian · ICT Level 0, Block B, Room 1 | Contested BodiesAutonomy, Possession, Silence, and Bodily Crisis · Language: French / English · ICT Level 0, Block B, Room 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chaired by Stefan Attard | Chaired by Pietro Grassi | Chaired by Charlo Camilleri | |
| 16:30 | Valentine Gourinat The Pain of the Prosthetic Amputated Body: Embodiment, Ordeal, and the Reconfiguration of Meaning [English] | Alessandro Mastinu Embodied Care: Integrating Science, Experience, and Meaning in Contemporary Medicine [Italian] | Erika Barreto Body, Autonomy, and Interdependence: An Ethnography of Severe Motor Disability [French] |
| 17:00 | Emily Heavey Embodying Absence: Narrative and the Phantom Limb [English] | Tiziana Stobbione Caring for the Whole Person: Integrating Clinical Practice, Organisational Models, and the Meaning of Healthcare [Italian] | Laurent Messer Possession and Rheumatology [French] |
| 17:30 | Sharon Martinelli “It’s All in the Mind”? Embodied Silence and the Separation of Mind and Body in Invisible Illness [English] | Paolo Seminara Mental Illness in Ludwig Binswanger in Light of Bioethical Principles [Italian] | Kouassi Désiré Amani Le corps-voix : Du langage corporel au silence verbal performatif [French] |
| 18:00 | Heidi Bickis and Tracey Collett Figures of Fatigue: Exploring the Tired Body [English] | Nausica Cangini Between Body and Meaning: A Cognitivist Reading of Traumatic Experience [Italian] | Aggée Célestin Lomo Myazhiom Body, Disability, and Vulnerability in David Le Breton [French] |
| 18:30 | Tracey Cilia and Colette Savage Dissociation, embodiment, and changes in the sense of self through embodied mindfulness practice and contemplative writing/poetry: a hermeneutic autoethnographic approach [English] | Pasquale Peluso Bodies that Speak in Silence: Youth Self-Harm between Self-Directed Deviance, Late-Modern Tensions, and the Search for Embodied Meaning [English] | Meryem Sellami [VIDEO] The Vertigo of Suicide among Young People: Disappearing in Order to Live Better [French] |
| 19:00 | End of session | End of session | End of session |
Social Programme
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 19:15 | Transport to group dinner |
| 19:45 | Group dinner — traditional Maltese food |
Day 3 — Wednesday 16 September
16 September 2026
Morning — Parallel Sessions
| Time | Sacred BodiesRitual and Embodied Spirituality · Language: English · ICT Level 0, Block B, Room 1 | Future BodiesTechnology, Regulation, and the Transformation of the Human · Language: Mixed · ICT Auditorium |
|---|---|---|
| Chaired by Carl Sultana | Chaired by Carlo Calleja | |
| 09:00 | Dorianne Buttigieg “Now I Am Less Aware of Its Soul than of Its Body”: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s The Cathedral and the Embodiment of Sacred Space as a Living Liturgical Body [English] | Markus Krienke Bodies, Limits, and Vulnerability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Rethinking the Human Condition [English] |
| 09:30 | Jimmy Bonnici Resignifying the Parish through Embodied Relationality and Online Presence [English] | Stéphanie Mauclair When the Body Becomes Data: The Digital Body, Legal Identity, and Embodiment [English] |
| 10:00 | Charlo Camilleri Embodied Mysticism in Performance: Restaging the Passion in Il-Viżjonijiet ta’ Santa Marija Maddalena de Pazzi [English] | Merissa Elizabeth Hickman Governing the Not-Yet-Pregnant: Problematising Preconception Health Policy [English] |
| 10:30 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | Glen Attard Grace beyond Control: Embodiment and the Collapse of Spiritual Mastery [English] | Massimiliano Nisati The “Right to a Dignified Death”: End-of-Life Issues in the Italian Legal System between Legislative Inertia and Constitutional Court Assessments [Italian] |
| 11:30 | Pasquale Giustiniani Body, Gender, and Person: Affirmations and Inhibitions of Corporeality in Selected Ethical and Religious Perspectives [Italian] | Carlo Simeone The Concept of Environment in the Digital Age [Italian] |
| 12:00 | Cecilia Bastos [VIDEO] Embodied Tradition and Subjective Change in Yoga and Meditation Practices [English] | Ann Lenore Moradian Embodiment, Ethics, and Evolution: What Can We Learn from the Practice of Mindful Movement? [English] |
| 12:30 | End of parallel session | End of parallel session |
Closing Programme
| Time | Activity | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Concluding plenary — Chaired by Carlo Calleja | ICT Auditorium | |
| 12:45–13:15 | Pietro Grassi Beyond the Message: The Body as a Place of Communication [Italian] | ICT Auditorium |
| 13:15 | Conclusion by the Dean of the Faculty — Stefan Attard | ICT Auditorium |
| 13:30 | Lunch |
Optional Social Programme
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 14:30 | Transport to Ħaġar Qim |
| 16:30 | Transport back to the University |
| 19:00 | Dinner |
Thursday 17 September
Optional social programme
| Activity |
|---|
| A visit to Gozo, Malta's sister island is planned for this day. Details will be shared later on. |