Key research themes
1. How do culture and biology interact to shape the semantics, expression, and experience of emotions?
This research area investigates the complex interplay between universal biological underpinnings of emotion and culturally specific variations in emotion meaning, expression, and experience. It matters because understanding this interplay can clarify how emotions are both biologically rooted and socially constructed, illuminating cross-cultural communication, emotional socialization, and the evolution of emotion concepts.
2. What roles do emotions play in social life, relational contexts, and cultural practices according to anthropological and sociological perspectives?
This theme focuses on the social functions of emotions within interpersonal relations, social norms, and cultural frameworks. It emphasizes emotions as relational phenomena integral to social ordering, interaction, and identity construction. Investigating this reveals how emotions shape and are shaped by socio-cultural structures, affecting everything from everyday interactions to political and religious life.
3. How are emotions enacted and understood through embodied experience, narrative, and cultural meaning in anthropology and philosophy?
This theme explores phenomenological, enactivist, and narrative approaches to emotions, emphasizing embodied affectivity, lived experience, and the enactment of emotions through social and cultural practices. It advances the understanding of emotions beyond cognitive appraisal or discrete states, situating them as dynamic, embodied engagements with the world, and as meaningful phenomena shaped by language, culture, and embodied cognition.