Empirica research group approaches research with an attitude, where making, acting and engaging play important roles.

About Empirica

The Empirica group approaches research with an attitude, where making, acting and engaging play important roles. The group’s goal is to develop exploratory methods, where art and design related practices are utilized in experimental ways as research practice.

The group also conducts fundamental design research in design history, design professions and values, cross-cultural connections in design and design in societal discourses.

The group’s theoretical framework is in humanities. For the group the term culture refers on one hand to our situated everyday habits and environments and on the other hand to professional practices related to the field of art and design.

For mapping out the different creative processes, the group documents and reflects in diverse ways. Its main challenge is to gain deeper understanding of the creative practice: how the practice unfolds and what is the relation between the processes and the results? How does the creative activity within the field of art and design impact on and digest influences from the society.

More information about the ideology of Empirica can be found in our strategy.

Recent Publications | Complete list

November 2018 |

Why our brains love arts and crafts by Minna Huotilainen, Mimmu Rankanen, Camilla Groth, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Maarit Mäkelä in Formakademisk.

Huotilainen, Minna, Rankanen Mimmu, Groth Camilla, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Pirita and Mäkelä, Maarit.  Why our...

November 2018 |

Documentation as a practice-led research tool for reflection on experiential knowledge by Maarit Mäkelä and Nithikul Nimkulrat in Formakademisk

Mäkelä, Maarit and Nimkulrat, Nithikul (2018).  Documentation as a practice-led research tool for reflection...

April 2018 |

Urban Hitchhiking: Wandering with Others as a Research Method by Anna Kholina in Suomen Antropologi

This essay introduces urban hitchhiking, a reflective practice of sharing a walk with strangers, and considers its relevance for research and artistic practice. We demonstrate this with the help of our own accounts of Urban Hitchhiking as two artists who developed the concept and a researcher who practiced it. The essay summarises four perspectives that emerged from our findings: spatiality, performativity, gender, and hospitality.