Inaugural lecture: Moved by Media and Emotion

Prof. dr. Elly Konijn

On Wednesday 30 September, professor Elly Konijn will give her inaugural lecture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on the subject of media and emotions. The lecture (in Dutch) will explore a broad range of media, from theatre to reality soap, from video games to social robots. One of the research projects professor Konijn is involved in is that of sociobot Alice: her research team aims to discover, with the help of community nurses and family, how this care robot should react to and speak with older women to reduce the effects of loneliness. Can people form affective ties with a robot, and can a robot replace a human being?

In her inaugural lecture, professor Konijn makes use of recent research to demonstrate how the emotions aroused by various media can influence people’s actions. She will also show how certain emotions incite people to turn to certain media, or how they subsequently trigger people to engage with these media in their daily lives.

For more information (in Dutch), see the announcement on the website of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Alice Cares – the documentary on care robot Alice, developed at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Advertisement

BATTLEFIELD EMOTIONS 1500-1900 interdisciplinary workshop

Friday 18 january 2013, 10:00 – 17:00

VU University, Boelelaan 1105 Amsterdam (room 1 E – 13)          For a route description see this link.

Battlefield Emotions 

From the 18th century onwards there is a growing interest in battlefield emotions. This can for example be seen in the reports and memoirs of soldiers, in the shift of focus from heroic facts to individual emotions in art and literature and the appearance of empathy and enthusiasm as important notions in military science. The aim of the workshop is to study how and why this changes did occur. In doing so it will try to chart the changes  in expressions of battlefield emotions and shed light on the social and cultural developments that brought these changes about.

Registration

Registration is possible before 1 january. If you want to participate please fill in this form.

Program

See for the program below or download the full program with the abstracts of the lectures here .

10.00 – 10.40 Welcome and introduction

10.40 – 11.40 Lecture by Mary A. Favret (Indiana University, USA)  Fallen Bodies: Considering Soldiers and Suicides c.1800 (download abstract) and discussion

11.40 Coffee

11.50 Richard Smith (Goldsmiths University of London, UK) A “considerably larger emotional  capacity than the English”: Changing representations of the West Indian soldier’s character and sensibilities from the French Revolution to the First World War (download abstract) and discussion.

12.40 Lunch break

13.40 David Lederer (NUI Maynooth, Ireland) Where is the battlefield? The Ubiquity of Fear during the Thirty Years War (download abstract)

14.10 Lisa de Boer (Westmont College, USA) The Sidelong Glance: Tracing ‘Battlefield Emotions’ in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (download abstract)

15.30 Coffee

15.50 Mareen van Marwyck (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) “Love Wars”: The Sentimentalization of Violence in Early 19th Century German Literature (download abstract) and discussion

 16.40 Conclusions by Dorothee Sturkenboom (Independent Scholar)

17.00 Drinks

Battlefield Emotions 1500-1900 is organized by: Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies (ACCESS), Group for Early Modern Studies Ghent University (GEMS), History Department Leiden University. For more information: Erika Kuijpers, h.m.e.p.kuijpers@hum.leidenuniv.nl / Cornelis van der Haven, Cornelis.vanderHaven@UGent.be

Transmission of Emotions: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Friday 10 February 2012, 12.30-17.30 hrs
VU University Amsterdam, Aurorazaal

‘The business of understanding the transmission of affect, in terms of theory, science, and practice, has barely begun’
– Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (2004)

How and why do we sense and share the emotions of others? The question of how we are moved by the feelings of others has long remained largely unexplored in psychology, neurology, and language research. It is only recently that various disciplines have begun to unravel the mechanisms of empathy, emotional contagion, and the operations of affect in watching a film or reading a novel.

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together three scientists who explore the transmission of emotions from different disciplinary perspectives: neurology, social psychology and psycholinguistics. Their lectures will introduce current knowledge of the transmission of emotion in these three fields. The symposium seeks to encourage interdisciplinary exchange on this broad-ranging topic so fundamental to understanding human interaction.

The speakers:

Christian Keysers (neurology): The emphatic brain

Agneta Fischer (social psychology): The regulation of social relations through emotional mimicry

Jos van Berkum (psycholinguistics): So what about emotion in language?

Registration closed on 25 January 2012

This event is organized by the Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies, sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the Faculty of Arts, VU University.

The Transmission of Emotions

An interdisciplinary Symposium

10 February 2012, VU University

This symposium at the Vrije Universiteit brings together three scholars from different disciplines, who will each give an accessible
introduction to the present state of knowledge about the transmission of emotions in their field.

Agneta Fischer, professor in Social
Psychology at the University of Amsterdam will speak on emotional contagion;

Christian Keysers, Professor for the Social
Brain at the medical faculty of the University Medical Center Groningen and the
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience will speak on empathy and mirror neurons;

Jos van Berkum, professor in Discourse,
Cognition & Communication at Utrecht University will speak on language and emotion.

What do we know about the role of language in the  emotional effects that a book has on its reader? How does an audience get
‘infected’ with the emotions of a speaker? And what is the role of mirror  neurones in the transmission of emotions? With three lectures and ample room  for discussion, this symposium aims to stimulate (further) interaction between  different academic disciplines.

Organisation:

Kristine Steenbergh, Amsterdam Centre for  Cross-Disciplinary Study of the Emotions and the Senses, VU University Amsterdam. This interdisciplinary seminar is sponsored by the Faculty of Arts of VU University and an NWO VENI grant.

Registration closed on 25 January 2012.