This presentation treats space and mobility as inseparable, where space is produced through movement, coordination, and pause, while mobility is always spatially formatted by routes, nodes, and boundaries. Their intersection is therefore not an overlap but a relational field in which placement and movement continuously reify one another. This perspective invites complex mixed methods approaches based on methodological mapping across different forms of evidence, which can show how movements cluster or stretch, while narrative interviews, participatory mapping, and field observation can uncover how actors interpret routes, obstacles, and anchors in everyday life. The aim is not merely conventional triangulation, but conceptual integration: Using different methods to move between patterns in systems and interpretation of experience. Mixed methods research can theorize space-mobility while also exploring how they are experienced, governed, and contested.
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\r\nManfred Max Bergman is Chair of Social Research and Methodology at the University of Basel and Director of the Social Transitions Research Group. He works on methodological innovations to the study of sustainability transitions, inequality, health, corporate responsibility, and social change, with particular expertise in mixed methods research and case study design. He has contributed to scholarship on mobility, inequality, and public space through international comparative and interdisciplinary projects, and previously served as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research. His current international engagements include service on the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Indo-Swiss Joint Scientific Board, collaboration with ICSSR in India on an innovative research methods training programme, and a visiting professorship at NUS in Singapore focused on implementation science and transdisciplinary research.
The MARVEL Junior Seminar series is continuing in hybrid mode, in order to maintain in-person contacts and allow off-campus attendees to follow the seminars remotely! The MARVEL Junior Seminars aim to intensify interactions between the MARVEL Junior scientists belonging to different research groups. The seminar consists of two 25-minute presentations, followed by time for discussion.
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\r\nZacharie Waysenson
\r\nLaboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne Université
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\r\nMaria Andolfatto
\r\nLaboratory for Materials Simulations, PSI
In rodents, the whisker (vibrissal) system supports behaviors ranging from locomotor guidance and object exploration to social interactions and anemotaxis (flow sensing). This versatility makes whisker-dependent behavior a powerful lens on sensorimotor control. The first part of the talk describes use of the whisker system to study embodied sensing and closed-loop sensorimotor control. On the sensory side, I will present models of whisker mechanics and signal encoding by primary sensory neurons. On the motor side, I will describe models of whisker musculature and emerging insights into the circuits that generate whisker movements. I will then outline key challenges in linking sensing to movement within an integrated closed-loop framework. The second part of the talk will highlight how whiskers interact with moving air. Bending and vibration encode direction and speed, including regimes where vibrations emerge at subcritical Reynolds numbers through coupled structural nonlinearities and fluid-structure interactions.
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