Research

Everything here serves two questions — what is it to teach, and what is it to learn? The particular studies are occasions for asking them, not subjects in their own right. Two kinds of work hold the inquiry: field work tests the ground, and the conceptual ground holds the field. Neither is the warm-up for the other.

01

Field Work

The empirical program — studies with sites, participants, observation, and data. Concluded studies move their outputs to Publications.

Teacher Experiences with AI

Phenomenological observations of teachers encountering AI tools, often for the first time — prompting patterns, reactions, and the lived experience of meeting a technology that raises the question of what teaching is.

How does a pedagogical identity transform when it encounters artificial intelligence in practice?

Entangled Learning

Multi-site observations of emplaced and embodied learners across ecological settings, testing whether entangled learning is ontological transformation rather than knowledge acquisition.

What is it to learn, entangled with the more-than-human world?

Planning phase
Secondhand Experiences in Teaching

How teachers use their own firsthand experiences as a teaching resource — building a picture of the ontological impact teachers have on students by sharing their own stories.

What is it like to create secondhand experiences for students based on our own firsthand experiences?

Active
Place-Based Experience

Deep-rootedness in place brings about ontological development, often impacting students particularly in designed places like museums, art galleries, or national parks.

What is it like to learn in place, sedimented with meaning and explored through narrative exhibits?

Active
02

Ground Work

The conceptual program — theorizing and framework-building. Equal in weight to Field Work; the ground the fieldwork is answerable to.

A Pedagogy of Dwelling

A framework building on Heidegger's concept of dwelling — education re-embedded in place, attentive to the rhythms of time, open to the emergence of meaning, and built on trust and finitude.

Visual Data Mapping

A qualitative research technique under development that collects phenomenological data and codes it as visual maps — letting temporal, spatial, and ontological inferences emerge about how a phenomenon was experienced.

In development
Public Pedagogy

How does an academic scholar share their work with the public? What happens to the scholar's identity when the metrics transition from citations to follows and conferences to podcasts?

03

Publications

The track record — publications, invited essays, and conference presentations, in reverse-chronological order.

In press  Legnini, S. (in press). Plants in place, plants as place: A review of Plants in Place by Casey & Marder. Environmental Philosophy.
2026  Legnini, S. (2026, August 10). Dwelling sensuously: The body's imagination and the recovery of perception [Conference presentation]. IHSRC 2026 Conference, Montreal, QC, Canada.
2026  Legnini, S. & Kruger-Ross, M. (2026, August 10). A pedagogy of dwelling with imagination, embodiment, and the clearing [Conference presentation]. IHSRC 2026 Conference, Montreal, QC, Canada.
2026  Kruger-Ross, M. (2026, August 10). Sustaining the clearing: Teaching as wondering [Conference presentation]. IHSRC 2026 Conference, Montreal, QC, Canada.
2026  Kruger-Ross, M., Schugar, H., & Legnini, S. (2026, April 1). What will it see? Examining bias in AI-assisted qualitative research [Conference presentation]. Leading Online Pedagogy and Engagement Conference, virtual.
2026  Legnini, S. & Kruger-Ross, M. (2026, February 5). Beyond the learning machine: Reclaiming experience in experiential education [Conference presentation]. EERA 2026 Conference, Clearwater, FL, United States.
2026  Legnini, S. & Kruger-Ross, M. (2026, February 5). Between anxiety and courage: How K-12 teachers encounter generative AI in practice [Poster session]. EERA 2026 Conference, Clearwater, FL, United States.