EP209, Sabrina Sauer: Improvise to Create Serendipity!

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.