On May 18, 2026, the new Potential Field Multimodal Communication (MultiCom) held its kick-off workshop at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg.
The workshop brought together a broad range of disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, theater studies, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, as well as graphic illustration. The goal of the workshop was not only to introduce the Potential Field itself, but also to bring together researchers across Goethe University and the RMU network whose work engages with related questions around multimodality, but for whom there has so far been relatively little structured exchange across disciplinary boundaries.
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A large part of the workshop was dedicated to discussion and exchange. Following a first round of introductions and icebreakers, eleven participants gave short contributions connected to their own research or interests related to multimodality. Some participants already work directly on multimodal communication, while others approached the topic more from the perspective of possible future connections to their own fields.
The workshop program can be downloaded here: Program (PDF)
Particularly striking was how often similar concepts and questions emerged across disciplines, albeit in quite different forms. Terms such as gesture, depiction, embodiment, performance, or modality itself often carried different assumptions depending on the disciplinary background. Precisely these moments — where participants realized that they were in some sense talking about “the same thing,” but not entirely — led to many of the most interesting conversations throughout the day.
A central part of the workshop was then dedicated to thinking about possible collaborations. One of the long-term aims of the Potential Field is to strengthen multimodality research at Goethe University across disciplinary boundaries. At the same time, the project deliberately starts from a relatively open and exploratory perspective: before larger structures or research proposals can emerge, people first need spaces in which they can actually meet, exchange ideas, and test whether shared interests might develop into something more concrete.
To encourage this, the workshop included an extended “rotating coffee” format. Participants repeatedly formed new small groups and were asked to imagine what a collaboration between their respective perspectives could look like — even, or especially, if the connection was not immediately obvious. Over three rounds of discussions, participants developed ideas for possible experiments, shared theoretical questions, methodological exchanges, workshops, and other collaborative formats. The final presentations already suggested a number of genuinely promising directions and showed how much potential there is for future exchange.
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| Snippets from rotating coffee: Yvonne Portele, Manfred Sailer, Sebastian Walter, Alina Gregori, Stefan Hinterwimmer (picture on the left), Jakob Krebs, and Jack E. Taylor (picture on the right). | |
The workshop also marked the starting point for the upcoming MultiCom Short-Term Collaboration (STC) program, which will support smaller collaborative projects across disciplines and research areas within the network. The call for proposals will be published at the end of May 2026, with first results planned to be presented at the next MultiCom workshop in November.
Beyond this, further activities are already being planned, including additional workshops and a directory of multimodality-related research across Goethe University and the RMU network.
Overall, the kick-off workshop made clear that there is considerable interest in multimodality across very different fields — and, perhaps more importantly, a strong openness to interdisciplinary exchange. We would like to thank all participants for contributing to such an engaged, thoughtful, and enjoyable day.