How to capture the unmeasurable aspects of the human experience? To feel, to relate, to connect is fundamentally human. To feel, to relate, to connect is fundamentally linked to our health and wellbeing.

But how to ‘prove’ this? How to ‘evidence’ that when people come together in community, their health and wellbeing improves? Is it true that ‘if you can’t measure it, it does not exist’? Or are we ‘measuring’ in a way that doesn’t give us access to some community members’ truth(s)? Thinking of ‘evidence’ in a way that doesn’t acknowledge the role of creativity and neglects to give us access to the human experience? And what is ‘truth’ anyway?

When measuring humanity started we were on a mission to measure health and inequalities through connectivity and creativity. One of the key questions that emerged was “why are we measuring?”. I’ve been playing around with this concept through my writing recently and found myself moving from ‘measurement’ to ‘magic’.

Measuring Humanity has now evolved to encompass questions around traditional research methodologies and what we consider as evidence, exploring fundamental epistimological and ontological questions of ’embodiment’ and ‘affect’.

These are big questions but also necessary ones. Our Backstory offers a detailed timeline as to how we have attempted to answer these questions and how our thinking has changed and evolved.

Please do get involved by reading our Projects page or by hitting Contact.

Welcome to the site!

Dr Marisa de Andrade

Principal Investigator – Measuring Humanity