Events
Forthcoming Events
Please watch this space for details.
Past Events
10 November 2025 (1-2pm GMT)
Doing emotions research: ethics, empathy, and engagement (a BSA Sociology of Emotions Study Group Seminar Series)
Online
About the Event
This FREE online event marks the first seminar of our 2025-2026 BSA Sociology of Emotions Study Group seminar series, where we'll unpack and deepen our thinking on concepts within the field.
In this seminar, we will consider questions such as:
- how do we represent ‘participants’ in ways that capture the fullness of their experiences?
- how, as ECRs, do we understand and represent participants when working with ‘data’ we did not ourselves construct?
- how can we avoid doing harm to participants in emotionally charged research?
- how do we protect ourselves as researchers of sensitive and potentially traumatic topics?
- what does empathy do (or not do) in emotions research?
- how do we understand empathy in contexts where we may not feel a sense of solidarity with our participants?
About us, and our Research
As co-convenors of the study group, we work in very different areas but engage with many similar challenges and complexities in our research. In this online event, we will explore questions which cut across our own work, framed around the themes: ethics, empathy, and engagement in emotions research. The floor will then open for discussion with attendees.
Anna Gillions is a PhD researcher at Coventry University. Her work uses visual methods to look at the role of emotion, specifically shame, in the relationship between marginalisation and violence in young men in the UK.
Georgie Akehurst is a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her PhD thesis focused on emotional negotiation among social networks following traumatic bereavement. Her current work in critical suicide studies focuses on how meanings of suicide are culturally embedded and negotiated, and how we can explore what it means to live a ‘liveable’ life.
Rachel Lewis is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Warwick University. In collaboration with creative practitioners, she works with police officers and (over)policed communities, using approaches such as forum theatre, spoken word, and creative writing to engage with questions around police practice, racism, authority, and safety.
Alice Menzel is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Her research examines the gendered emotional experiences of expectant fathers (as navigated across different space, and at overlapping spatial scales – from the body through to national legislation). Her recent publications explore fathers’ inter-embodied, multisensory encounters in forging anticipatory pre-parental bonds of love and intimacy with a future child, as well as the emotions embroiled in the negotiation of parental leave from work.
14 March 2025 (12-1pm GMT)
Beyond Pathology: (Re)conceptualising Distress in Physiotherapy Chronic Pain Care (a BSA Sociology of Emotions Study Group Seminar Series)
Online
2 December 2024 (1-2pm GMT)
Sociology of Emotions: Unpacking Concepts - Session 1: Fluid Hope in a Climate Emergency
Online
25-26 July 2024
Emotions and Precarity: Conflict, Connection and Change (BSA Emotions annual symposium)
Virtual event via Zoom
28-29 June 2023
Emotions and Society: Inequalities and Solidarities (BSA Emotions annual symposium)
Virtual event via Zoom
9 December 2021 (16:00–18:00 GMT)
Lauren Berlant: A Symposium (a Joint Sociology of Emotions & Families and Relationships Study Group Event)
Online
15 June 2021 (12:00–14:00 BST)
The Role of Self and Emotion within Qualitative Data Analysis
Online
10 December 2020 (4:00-5:30pm GMT)
BSA Emotions Study Group Webinar - The Conflicted History of an Emotion
Webinar