By improvising with serendipity, Sabrina Sauer creates stimulating, rich environments and enthusiasm for flowing with the unexpected.
Sabrina shares an example: "In my first year working as an assistant professor in Media Studies, I traveled to Milan for a conference. As I was relatively new to the field, I decided to watch a colleague's presentation. Her session was chaired by a person who asked that colleague about a (in my mind) random topic that I also happened to be very interested in, just as I was thinking about that topic. I thought that that was a nice coincidence. Incidentally, I liked this person's thought processes so much, that we are now married!"
Connecting with Coincidence with Bernard Beitman, MD (CCBB) is now offered as both an audio podcast--anywhere that podcasts are available--and in video format on the Connecting with Coincidence YouTube channel. Please SUBSCRIBE to our channel to be notified when future episodes are posted! Also available, there are 138 archived episodes of the CCBB podcast available, HERE.
Our guest Sabrina Sauer is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies. She obtained an MA in Media Studies, a PhD in Science and Technology Studies, and professionally trained as an actor prior to writing her dissertation about user-technology improvisations as a source for Information and Communication Technology innovation, at the University of Twente (Netherlands). She has published about media production, the agency of users and technological artefacts, exploratory search, improvisation, and serendipity. Her current research focuses on the use of digital data in creative media production practices, social innovation, and digital humanities. Learn more at https://www.rug.nl/staff/s.c.sauer/.
Our host Dr. Bernard Beitman is the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to attempt to systematize the study of coincidences. He is Founding Director of The Coincidence Project. His book, and his Psychology Today blog, are both titled Connecting with Coincidence. He has developed the first valid and reliable scale to measure coincidence sensitivity, and has written and edited coincidence articles for Psychiatric Annals. He is a visiting professor at the University of Virginia and former chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He attended Yale Medical School and completed a psychiatric residency at Stanford. Dr. Beitman has received two national awards for his psychotherapy training program and is internationally known for his research into the relationship between chest pain and panic disorder. Learn more at https://coincider.com.
