My research examines how social order is maintained in real time interaction under conditions of asymmetrical understanding. Grounded in ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis, I analyze how participants use embodied, aesthetic, and technologically mediated practices to produce intelligibility, coordinate action, and sustain participation across diverse cultural contexts, including interaction in settings of aging and care.
An Kosurko
Ph.D., Social Sciences
As a Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow (supported by the Musagetes Foundation), I lead the project Improvising with Dementia: Exploring Everyday Spontaneity to Support Caring Relationships, hosted by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph. This research investigates how everyday spontaneity— particularly through arts-based and technologically mediated practices —organizes interaction and reconfigures conditions of inclusion and care for people living with dementia. I am also a Research Associate with the Trent Centre for Aging and Society at Trent University.
I received my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki in 2025. My dissertation, Respecifying Social Inclusion in Practical Action, develops an ethnomethodological account of inclusion through multimodal conversation analysis of dance instruction in hybrid (online and face-to-face) settings, demonstrating how inclusion is achieved as an interactional accomplishment through the coordinated use of talk, movement, and material environments.
PARTICIPATE.
Exploring everyday spontaneity to support caring relationships
This arts-based project brings together artists, researchers, and people in caring relationships who live with dementia.
The program consists of various events that include:
An orientation meeting and visioning session (up to 1 hour)
A creative improvisation workshop (approximately 2 hours)
An interview and/or a focus group (approximately 1-2 hours)
Share your
insights.
For more information and to get involved, please learn more and download the informed consent form.
Our work is supported by the Musagetes Foundation and hosted by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph.
Project Partners
