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
Plenary Programme
| Time | Activity | Room |
|---|---|---|
| 08:30 | Registration | ICT Auditorium |
| 09:00 | Institutional welcome I | ICT Auditorium |
| 09:15 | Institutional welcome II | ICT Auditorium |
| 09:30 |
David Le Breton
Physically Embodying the World [French]
|
ICT Auditorium |
| 10:15 |
Antonio Staglianò
Between Biology and Spirituality: Does Faith Pass through the Body? [English]
|
ICT Auditorium |
| 11:00 | Coffee break | ICT Auditorium |
| 11:30 |
Dulce Maria Filgueira de Almeida Donnici
Embodiment, Memory, and Reception: David Le Breton’s Sociology of the Body in Brazil [English]
|
ICT Auditorium |
| 12:00 |
Raymond Zammit
“A Body You Have Prepared for Me”: The Body between Gift and Project [English]
|
ICT Auditorium |
| 12:30 |
Pietro Grassi
Beyond the Message: The Body as a Place of Communication [Italian]
|
ICT Auditorium |
| 13:00 | Lunch | ICT Auditorium |
Parallel Sessions — 14 September PM
| Time | Session A — Interpreting the Body with David Le Breton ICT Auditorium | Session B — Bodies in Motion Walking, Movement, and Embodied Practices · OB1 |
|---|---|---|
| 14:30 |
Esther Gloria Acosta Suárez
Resonances and Reflections on the Anthropological Figure of Whiteness in Le Breton, Based on a Research Study [French]
|
Laura Apolonio [VIDEO]
Walking and Drawing the World: The Moving Body as an Aesthetic Practice and Relational Experience [English]
|
| 15:00 |
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]
|
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 | Questions | Questions |
| 16:15 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 16:45 |
Margarita Iglesias Saldaña
Women’s History and Some Reflections on the Body in David Le Breton [French or English?]
|
|
| 17:15 |
Aggée Célestin Lomo Myazhiom
Body, Disability, and Vulnerability in David Le Breton [French]
|
Berfin Su Kazakli [WAITING FOR VISA]
Marked by the Pole: Pain, Discipline, and Affectivity in the Construction of the Pole Dancer’s Body in Turkey [English]
|
| 17:45 |
Nikolas Zammit
The Body as Rupture: Reading Adolescent Gender Dysphoria through David Le Breton [English]
|
Cecilia Bastos [VIDEO]
Embodied Tradition and Subjective Change in Yoga and Meditation Practices [English] [change]
|
| 18:15 | Questions | Questions |
| 18:30 | End of sessions | End of sessions |
Social Programme
| Time | Social Programme |
|---|---|
| 19:00 | Transport to the Three Cities |
| 19:30 | Walk through Isla/Senglea, Bormla/Cospicua, and Birgu/Vittoriosa |
| 20:00 | Dinner |
Day 2 — Tuesday 15 September
15 September 2026
Parallel Sessions — Morning
| Time | Session A — Social Bodies Identity, Memory, and the Regulation of Embodied Life · ICT Auditorium | Session B — Vulnerable and Disabled Bodies Disability and Embodied Vulnerability · OB1 |
|---|---|---|
| 08:30 |
Alex Almeida Reis and Ana Paula Bittencourt Okamoto [PENDING]
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]
|
| 09:00 |
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]
|
| 09:30 |
Rossella Bo
Bodies that Speak: Narrative Transformations and Processes of Subjectivation in Psychoanalytic Practice with Patients with Disabilities [English]
|
|
| 10:00 | Questions | Questions |
| 10:15 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 10:45 |
Lionel Obadia
Augmented and Robotised Bodies: “Farewell to the Body” or “Welcome to the Cyborg”? [English]
|
Erika Barreto
Body, Autonomy, and Interdependence: An Ethnography of Severe Motor Disability [French]
|
| 11:15 |
Alison Fixsen
The Disordered Body in Late Modernity [English]
|
Solange Bonello
Embodiment, Expectations, and Discontinuity: Women’s Lived Experiences of a Foetal Anomaly during Pregnancy [English]
|
| 11:45 |
Pasquale Giustiniani
Body, Gender, and Person: Affirmations and Inhibitions of Corporeality in Selected Ethical and Religious Perspectives [Italian]
|
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
|
| 12:15 | Questions | Questions |
Cultural Programme
| Time | Cultural Programme |
|---|---|
| 12:30 | Lunch — Maltese street food |
| 13:30 | Transport to Valletta |
| 14:00 | Guided walk: Parliament Building, Upper Barrakka Gardens, and Auberge de Castille |
| 14:30 | Visit to St John’s Co-Cathedral Including Caravaggio’s The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist |
| 16:00 | Transport back to the University |
Parallel Sessions — Evening
| Time | Session A — Bodies in Pain Pain, Trauma, and Bodies in Crisis · ICT Auditorium | Session B — Ill Bodies Illness, Care, and the Meaning of Medicine · OB1 |
|---|---|---|
| 16:30 |
Valentine Gourinat
The Pain of the Prosthetic Amputated Body: Embodiment, Ordeal, and the Reconfiguration of Meaning [English]
|
Philippe Cornet
Illness in Search of Meaning [French]
|
| 17:00 |
Emily Heavey
Embodying Absence: Narrative and the Phantom Limb [English]
|
Laurent Messer
Possession and Rheumatology [French]
|
| 17:30 |
Heidi Bickis and Tracey Collett
Figures of Fatigue: Exploring the Tired Body [English]
|
Sharon Martinelli
“It’s All in the Mind”? Embodied Silence and the Separation of Mind and Body in Invisible Illness [English]
|
| 18:00 | Questions | Questions |
| 18:15 |
Nausica Cangini
Between Body and Meaning: A Cognitivist Reading of Traumatic Experience [Itallian]
|
Alessandro Mastinu
Embodied Care: Integrating Science, Experience, and Meaning in Contemporary Medicine [Italian]
|
| 18:45 |
Pasquale Peluso
Bodies that Speak in Silence: Youth Self-Harm between Self-Directed Deviance, Late-Modern Tensions, and the Search for Embodied Meaning [English]
|
Tiziana Stobbione
Caring for the Whole Person: Integrating Clinical Practice, Organisational Models, and the Meaning of Healthcare [Italian]
|
| 19:15 |
Meryem Sellami - VIDEO
The Vertigo of Suicide among Young People: Disappearing in Order to Live Better [French]
|
Paolo Seminara
Mental Illness in Ludwig Binswanger in Light of Bioethical Principles [Italian]
Antonio Cristian Saraiva Paiva:
The Family as Storytellers of Illness: Toward a Lay Hermeneutics of Alzheimer’s Disease
|
| 19:45 | Questions | Questions |
| 20:00 | End of sessions / transport to dinner | End of sessions / transport to dinner |
Social Programme
| Time | Social Programme |
|---|---|
| 20:30 | Group dinner — traditional Maltese food |
Day 3 — Wednesday 16 September
16 September 2026
Parallel Sessions
| Time | Session A — Sacred Bodies Ritual and Embodied Spirituality · ICT Auditorium | Session B — Future Bodies Technology, Regulation, and the Transformation of the Human · OB1 |
|---|---|---|
| 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]
|
FIXSEN / SEMINARA |
| 10:30 | Questions | Questions |
| 10:45 | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 11:15 |
Ann Lenore Moradian
Embodiment, Ethics, and Evolution: What Can We Learn from the Practice of Mindful Movement? [English]
|
Merissa Elizabeth Hickman
Governing the Not-Yet-Pregnant: Problematising Preconception Health Policy [English]
|
| 11:45 |
Sarah Vella
When Words Are Not Enough: Movement as Communication in Embodied Lives [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]
|
| 12:15 |
Glen Attard
Grace beyond Control: Embodiment and the Collapse of Spiritual Mastery [English]
|
Carlo Simeone
The Concept of Environment in the Digital Age [Italian]
|
| 12:45 | End of parallel sessions | End of parallel sessions |
Closing Programme
| Time | Closing Programme | Room |
|---|---|---|
| 13:00 | Plenary session — conclusions and closing remarks | ICT Auditorium |
| 13:30 | Lunch | |
| 19:00 | Dinner |