Laboratory for Phenomenological Research

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Laboratory for Phenomenological Research

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LPR studies key phenomenological texts and applies these principles to qualitative research, bridging theory and practice to address modern research challenges.

10/20/2026

The Laboratory's open-access article has been published in Social Science & Medicine – the world's most prestigious journal for social scientific research on health and medicine (Impact Factor: 4.1; h-index: 309). This publication firmly establishes the Laboratory among those conducting empirical research at the highest level of international scholarship.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119975

The article, "Rethinking cancer survivorship on social media: A phenomenological study of embodiment, online visibility, and the content object-body", examines how creating cancer-related content on social media transforms survivors' lived experiences of illness. Drawing on interviews with 18 cancer content creators, we demonstrate how digital audiences can fundamentally reshape survivors' relationships with their bodies, identities, and experiences of recovery.

10/07/2026

Lab Head, Dr. Thomas Byrne will be joining the Graduate Chemistry’s Fall Wellness Series for a panel on navigating difficult PI–student dynamics. The discussion builds directly on our publications on power, conflict, and doctoral supervision. We are excited to see that work brought into conversation with graduate students.

09/25/2026

Lab Head Thomas Byrne’s new article examines a persistent gap in qualitative death research. Heidegger is everywhere in the field, yet his actual analysis of being-towards-death has rarely been put to work in empirical inquiry. The article first unpacks Heidegger’s analysis in clear and usable terms, then shows how its distinctions can be translated into qualitative interview design through Phenomenologically Directed Qualitative Research (PDQR).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13576275.2026.2738772

For those without access:https://storage.googleapis.com/gator-users/user-651041/documents/bd63f258fb6847e9942784b53a9c8be9/Employing%20Heidegger%20in%20death%20studies%20a%20practical%20introduction%20for%20qualitative%20research.pdf

This paper presents a first introduction of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of death in a form that is philosophically exact and methodologically transformative for qualitative research in death studie...

09/17/2026

The Laboratory for Phenomenological Research is pleased to welcome Thomas Fuchs for an upcoming lecture in our speaker series.
The talk will be held on Zoom and is free and open to everyone. Advance registration is required.
We hope you will join us!
Register here: http://go.uic.edu/Fuchs

08/11/2026

Employing Heidegger and Sartre, the lab’s new paper demonstrates how doctoral candidates can become “commodified agents”, whose agency can be reorganized around serving their supervisors. The article offers a clear demonstration of what our original method – Phenomenologically Directed Qualitative Research – can reveal.

Published today in The Journal of Higher Education – Impact Factor 2.6, acceptance rate ~8%.
For those without access:
https://storage.googleapis.com/gator-users/user-651041/documents/41d2ab3fb0ab4b4e827a32a43ecb9c20/Lab%20agency.pdf

Higher education research on STEM lab supervision has often addressed the dynamics of doctoral agency through three parallel strands of scholarship: the restriction of research judgment, the redefi...

07/27/2026

A new empirical study builds its central theoretical framework on Lab Head Thomas Byrne's article, “The Phenomenology of ChatGPT”. The authors use Byrne’s interpretation of Husserl to formulate their research questions and analytical framework for examining approximately 800 AI tutor conversations. Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772503026000599

06/11/2026

Our new article demonstrates that graduate departments can make student complaints disappear even before any formal process begins. They do this by making students so marginal that their concerns no longer sound like real problems. --- This is qualitative phenomenology at full force: front-loaded concepts for analyzing lived worlds, not fake Husserlian rituals.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QSDMMFWRBWRFJXJCMADY/full?target=10.1080/13562517.2026.2686937
For those without publisher access: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/406948158_Recognition_in_STEM_doctoral_education_a_phenomenology_of_student_complaints_institutional_response_and_lived_conditions

Existing research, including scholarship influenced by Bourdieu, has shown that recognition in doctoral education is mediated by symbolic power and institutional habitus. This paper advances that d...

05/27/2026

In this new open access FQS article, Lab Head Thomas Byrne engages with Max van Manen - one of the most influential figures in phenomenological qualitative research. Byrne argues that van Manen misrepresents some of the most basic tenets of Husserl’s philosophy. The article offers a broader critique of how phenomenology is taught, repeated, and authorized in qualitative research.

05/14/2026

The lab’s new article demonstrates how Sartre’s account of the look, rather than Foucault’s medical gaze, can guide our understanding of patient interactions with doctors. The article is the first published study to employ our own new method, Phenomenologically Directed Qualitative Research (PDQR).
If you need access, feel free to message Thomas Byrne or email him at [email protected]

Contemporary health research often examines patient objectification, patient self-objectification, and good patient performance as separate concerns. Treating t...

05/07/2026

We held a lovely lab dinner to celebrate our publications and to end the academic year!

Address

Coordianted Science Lab, University Of
Urbana, IL
61820

Website

https://institutephenom.web.illinois.edu/

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