On 18 January 2018, the CIAP (Conference for Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics) Winter Symposium 2018 will be hosted by the Politics and IR team at Canterbury Christ Church University, headed by Dr Demetris Tillyris (Lecturer in Political Theory).

Conference description:
The emotional turn in IR and Political History is gaining considerable scholarly acknowledgement, evident in recent works such as ‘Researching Emotions in International Relations: Methodological Perspectives on the Emotional Turn’ (2018, Maéva Clément and Eric Sangar). In addition, political science, having traditionally concerned itself solely with the ‘rational’ public sphere (rather than the ‘emotional’ private sphere), has increasingly questioned its own dichotomisation. In recent years the discipline has identified broader definitions of ‘politics’ and, as a result, new forms of political practice.

The present political climate—frequently characterised by widespread distrust, populist campaigns and extreme rhetoric—necessitates addressing and examining the emotions that underpin so much of the international political process. These informal and overtly affective manifestations of politics are enormously influential, profoundly shaping the democratic process both within and between nations. Moreover, these manifestations are extremely varied in nature, and thus require an interdisciplinary approach to examine them.

This workshop brings together scholars from a range of disciplines, including education, psychology, political theory and sociology. It includes a breadth of academic approaches, from quantifying emotions to the practice of storytelling. In doing so, we illustrate that emotions are cross-disciplinary as political concerns, and that their relevance goes far beyond the study of politics per se.

Conference programme:
You can download the conference programme here.