With apologies for cross-posting, and also for the tight timetable (deadline for expressions of interest/abstracts is next Thursday 4 December)
best wishes
Ellie


Call for panel participation or papers in session(s)

Emotional states: researching emotions and affect in politics, policy and practice

International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies, Edinburgh, 10-12 June 2015

Contributions are sought for a session on how and to what end emotions and affect are invoked and researched in politics, policy, governance and practice. There is something seductive about a focus on emotions and feelings for policy-makers, politicians and researchers, with the suggestions of a break from the normal registers of academic and political discourses: this in itself does not invalidate such a move but there is a need to look beyond the instinctively engaging nature of feelings-talk to consider the specificities of how and why emotions are being invoked, and with what consequences. This session aims to focus in particular on a) the methodological and epistemological challenges of researching emotions and affect in politics, policy and practice, and b) the potential implications and limitations of such research, including its consequences in policy and practice.
Contributions are sought in EITHER of the two forms listed below:
-       contributions to a panel discussion session with short opening presentations of a maximum of 5 minutes each followed by a panel discussion;
-       ‘standard’ paper presentations of 15-20 minutes.
Depending on responses, we will aim to convene both a standard paper session and a panel discussion session.

Please email the session organisers Ellie Jupp ([log in to unmask]), Jessica Pykett ([log in to unmask]) and Fiona M. Smith ([log in to unmask]) with proposals for contributions including a note of the type of contribution preferred (short presentation and panel OR standard paper) and a title and abstract or expression of interest of 100-200 words by Thursday 4th December 2014. For further details on the International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies, see https://emotionalgeographiesconference.wordpress.com/

Relevant themes which contributors might like to consider include (but are not limited to):
- how to value the emotional dynamics of politics, policy and practice while also recognising the seductions of the emotional in various policy/political contexts;
- specifically methodological considerations of how emotions and affect can be examined in relation to themes such as the ‘relational state’
- critical analysis of the promotion of ‘co-production’ in public services and related invocation of qualities of ‘care’, ‘compassion’ and ‘love’ in public sector work, including drawing on the emotional labour of volunteers and community participants in the delivery of services.
- reflections on the emphasis on the emotional, and affect in public services and policy when the dominant context is one of the fragmentation of the public sector. In this context, does the focus on emotional rather than other kinds of resources (i.e. financial, material) serve to further undermine such a system?
- What happens when the emotions we research are not just ‘positive’ ones about care, compassion, loyalty or empathy, but a much more ambivalent range of emotions that might characterise public sector work at the current time? What are the ethical and political implications of researching such emotions?
- What are the potential inequalities in the research context around emotions and affect? Are all citizens equally able to understand and articulate their own emotional and material needs?
- What are the implications of research about the ‘emotional subject’ in the context of the neoliberal state, and in critical approaches to this?



Dr Eleanor Jupp
Research Fellow - Health and Social Care
The Open University
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
http://www.open.ac.uk/people/efj26
ESRC seminar series www.homespaceseminars.org

latest publications: Jupp, E (2014) 'Women, communities, neighbourhoods: approaching gender and feminism in UK urban policy',  Antipode, early view DOI: 10.1111/anti.12088



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