About

The Posthuman Walking Project (PWP) is a transdisciplinary collaboration that brings together walker partners and arts and physiotherapy researchers from the UK, Norway, Canada, the Philippines and New Zealand. The project investigates the relationship between persistent pain and walking and involves academics working closely with up to two walker-partners in each country. Each walker-partner is central to the research process across the project’s initial year, and beyond. Walkers come from varied cultural and socioeconomic profiles and pain experiences and some have chosen to use pseudonyms.

The research has grown in an environment where persistent pain affects more than 30% of people worldwide and is a burden to individuals, their families and local economies. Awareness of the condition has often been dominated by interview data where researchers narrate the experiences of others and disseminate their findings within academic communities. The PWP redefines this approach as walkers partners are invited to document the relationship between different environments and the experience of pain whilst walking. Using mobile phones to gather video and still imagery of each meaningful walk, project partners illuminate how different cultural and socioeconomic communities become entangled with place, climate and purpose whilst walking for work or leisure.