Valerie Malhotra Bentz, Ph.D

I am interdisciplinary by nature.  I went to university on a music scholarship and ended up majoring in English and sociology and minoring in music.  My masters is in social welfare. I was head of research for the United Fund in Milwaukee and became a professional psychotherapist in Texas, in private practice and worked in a mental hospital while a tenured professor at Texas Woman’s University teaching in a doctoral program in sociology and undergraduate social work.  I came to Fielding in 1992 serving as Associate Dean for Research and in the 90s wrote Mindful Inquiry in Social Research with Jeremy Shapiro for our beginning students to engage with alternative epistemologies.  It has been used in 25 graduate programs and was recently cited in the Handbook of Inclusion for Universities.

I am interested in human consciousness development and improving lifeworlds. I am a phenomenologist in addition to being a sociologist and therapist. Phenomenology is a gateway to deepening your understanding of self and others.  However, I have mentored many who do quantitative and qualitative research using a variety of methods.  I am also a certified yoga teacher, and massage therapist.

Currently I am chair of the concentration SPCL, Somatics, Phenomenology and Communicative Leadership.  Somatics is embodied awareness that is important for practitioners to achieve results for themselves and others that takes fully into account that we exist in bodies. Phenomenology expands this into appreciation and understanding of the depths of awareness and the ways of taping into our witness consciousness and into looking at l organizations and communities from the inside, as “lifeworlds”.

I have edited two books in the last two years, published by Fielding University Press. They are called Contemplative Social Research: Caring for Self Being and Lifeworld and Expressions of Phenomenological Research: Consciousness and Lifeworld Studies.  They both contain work by Fielding alumni and other scholars internationally.

Recently, I co-authored a paper with two alumni from Fielding, James Marlatt and Ayumi Nishii, and Carol Estrada, current student, which will be published in a journal, Schutzian Research.  It is called “Transformative Phenomenology as an Antidote to Technological Deathworlds.”  We work collaboratively as a community of practice in transformative phenomenology.

Currently, I am leading a research project called Collaboration with Strangers involving doctoral students and alumni connecting Fielding Graduate University students and alumni with doctoral students at the University of Lodz, Poland. Together they will be building communities of practice across cultures and races using somatic phenomenology.  You are invited to join us in this exciting project.

Information about all of my current work can be seen on the Current Work page, which you can access in the menu or by clicking the link below.