Stirring the Pot: Aphrodite as Method in Jungian Arts-Based Research
Stirring the Pot: Aphrodite as Method in Jungian Arts-Based Research
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Stirring the Pot:
Aphrodite as Method in Jungian Arts-Based Research
A 5-Week Online Course
with Dr Roula-Maria Dib
When: Mondays January 11, 18, 25 and February 1, 8
Where: Online, via Zoom
Fee: £200
Early bird fee: £180
(until November 30, 2026)
Course Description
What happens when Aphrodite enters the methodology?
Research is often imagined as a process of observation, analysis, and interpretation. But what if knowing also begins with attraction? What if beauty, desire, longing, and the relationships we form with our subjects are not merely distractions from research, but part of how knowledge emerges?
This 5-week experiential course explores Aphrodite as a methodological (mythic and archetypal) lens and Eros as a mode of inquiry, drawing on Jungian psychology, mythology, aesthetics, embodied research, and arts-based methodologies.
Rather than focusing on romantic love or the psychological exploration of personal relationships, we will investigate how Eros, beauty, embodiment, and love might become ways of researching, creating, and knowing. While personal experience inevitably informs creative inquiry, our central emphasis will remain on Jungian arts-based research practices and the relationships we form with images, ideas, materials, places, questions, and the creative process itself.
Taking Aphrodite as our playful and provocative guide, we will explore what it means to cultivate an Aphrodite sensitivity: a heightened attentiveness to what attracts, moves, unsettles, or fascinates us.
But Aphrodite does not simply bring beauty and connection. She also stirs the pot. She complicates our intentions, challenges our assumptions, exposes our projections, and sometimes draws us towards what we had not intended to explore. Like the Trickster, she can be both a menace and an eye-opener!
Through creative experimentation, theoretical discussion, and reflective practice, participants will investigate how aesthetic, embodied, and relational experiences might generate artistic and scholarly knowledge. We will also consider the ethical complexities of researching through desire, including the boundaries between intimacy and appropriation, attentiveness and projection, love and possession.
Throughout this original JABR course, participants will develop an individual arts-based research project, culminating in a final sharing and reflection.
Course Themes:
Week 1: Eros and Beauty (the art of aesthetic knowing)
Week 2: The Body and Nature (knowing through movement)
Week 3: Aphrodite Stirring the Pot (desire, longing, and creative disruption)
Week 4: Love (research as transformation)
Week 5: After Aphrodite (ethics, reflection, and what we carry home)
About the Tutor:
Roula-Maria Dib, PhD, FRSA is a scholar, poet, and arts-based researcher whose work explores the intersections of literature, depth psychology, mythology, and creative inquiry. She is the founding director of the London Arts-Based Research Centre (LABRC) and Editor-in-Chief of Indelible, a journal dedicated to cross-disciplinary creative and scholarly expression.
Roula’s research focuses on poetic inquiry, ekphrasis, and the imaginal dimensions of knowledge, examining how image, metaphor, and artistic practice can function as modes of research and understanding. She is the author of Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020), shortlisted for the International Association for Jungian Studies Book Awards, and the poetry collection Simply Being (Chiron Publications, 2021). She has also contributed to Patricia Leavy’s Handbook of Arts-Based Research.
A recipient of the British Council Alumni Award for Culture and Creativity and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Roula was endorsed by the British Academy for the UK Global Talent Visa in recognition of her contributions to the humanities and creative arts. Through LABRC, she has curated over one hundred international conferences, workshops, and creative research events, fostering dialogue between scholarship and artistic practice.
Her work continues to explore how image, language, and imagination can open new pathways of knowledge at the intersection of creativity, research, and inner life. She also writes The Icon Whisperer, a Substack publication devoted to the symbolic life of images and the imaginative dialogue between art, poetry, and the psyche.
Course Approach
-The course combines accessible theoretical discussion with experiential arts-based inquiry, individual reflection, and group dialogue.
-Participants will be encouraged to experiment with different artistic forms, including poetry, visual art, photography, movement, narrative, and interdisciplinary creative practices.
-Throughout the course, participants will develop an “Aphroditic Research Portfolio”, bringing together creative experiments, reflections, and artistic responses around an existing or emerging research question. No completed artwork or formal research project is required at the outset.
No prior experience of Jungian psychology or arts-based research is required. All creative activities are adaptable, and participants will not be expected to disclose intimate personal experiences.
Course Objectives
By the end of this five-week course, participants will have had opportunities to:
- Explore Eros as a mode of inquiry, examining how attraction, beauty, desire, and relational experience might contribute to knowledge-making within Jungian arts-based research.
- Cultivate an Aphrodite sensitivity, developing greater attentiveness to the aesthetic, emotional, sensory, and imaginal dimensions of creative research.
- Experiment with embodied and relational ways of knowing, exploring how the body, imagination, artistic practice, and our encounters with the world can inform research.
- Investigate the creative potential of disruption, considering how desire, longing, contradiction, and unexpected attractions might challenge assumptions and open new directions of inquiry.
- Reflect critically on love, care, and ethical responsibility in research, including questions of projection, boundaries, reciprocity, and the relationship between researcher and researched.
- Develop an individual arts-based research project, integrating creative experimentation, Jungian perspectives, and reflective practice into an evolving body of work.
Who is this course for?
The course welcomes anyone interested in exploring the intersections between creativity, psyche, embodiment, and knowledge.
- Artists and creative practitioners
- Writers and poets
- Researchers and academics
- Therapists, counsellors, and coaches
- Educators and facilitators
- Jungian scholars and practitioners
- Arts-Based Research practitioners
- Students interested in creative research methodologies
- Anyone interested in mythology, beauty, embodiment, and the relationship between creativity and knowledge.
- Anyone wishing to discover new ways of knowing through artistic practice
What you will get:
- A certificate of completion from the LABRC
- An opportunity to publish your work in literary and arts magazines (including our own Indelible) and to participate at one of Indelible’s online or in-person events
- A wealth of knowledge and new skills from sources, discussions, and practice, which you may develop into a conference paper, integrate into your research (eg: thesis), or publish as an article/book chapter.
- Become part of a new writing community by meeting fellow creatives from different disciplines and experiences. In other words, like-minded friends who may collaborate with you in future research/writing projects.
- Hone your creative research skills while receiving support and inspiration for exploring and developing your craft.
- Voucher for one free access to a paid Indelible event