The research group in aesthetics and phenomenology consists of researchers and graduate students in aesthetics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. The aim is to develop and improve the research within these research areas at NTNU, in collaboration with national and international research partners.

Relevant research areas include, but are not limited to:

• Phenomenology versus hermeneutics as methods
• Perception and vision
• Perception, language, and art
• Historicity and experience of time
• Phenomenology in science
• Intersubjectivity and ethics
• Body and self
• Aesthetics, aisthesis and the everyday
• Aesthetics of nature
• Psychoanalysis and Enactivism

The group meets regularly to discuss classical and contemporary texts of others, and drafts produced by the group members. The group is also active in developing interdisciplinary collaboration in research and teaching with fields such as the history of art, literary studies, musicology and music performance studies, architecture and fine art. It aims to develop proposals for externally funded projects.

Each year, the group arranges an annual workshop in Paris dedicated to Merleau-Ponty, with participants from other Norwegian and Nordic universities. It also arranges other conferences and seminars, such as the 2017 Conference for the Nordic Society for Phenomenology.