The Centre for the History of the Emotions

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Latest News

Public Lecture: 'The Devil Made Me Do It'

Thursday 19th January. 6-8pm. Professor Esther Cohen, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Venue: LT 2.40. Francis Bancroft Building. Mile End Campus.

This lecture will seek a connection between two totally different phenomena that flourished during the twelfth century...read more on our events page.

PhD Studentship in Medicine, Emotion and Disease in History Applications are invited for a Wellcome Trust funded PhD Studentship in Medicine, Emotion and Disease in History. The deadline for applications is 31 January 2012. For more information please visit our funding page.

Society for the Social History of Medicine Summer Conference - Call for Papers
Queen Mary, University of London, 10-12 September 2012
Proposals are invited on the theme 'Emotions, Health and Wellbeing'
For further information, please visit our events page

Schooling the Emotions
As part of the AHRC-funded 'Embodied Emotions' research project, investigating the history, theory and practice of emotional literacy in primary schools, Thomas Dixon has written a report on his work at Osmani School. The report, entitled 'Feeling Differently: Using Historical Images to Teach Emotional Literacy in an East London School', discusses classroom activities alongside philosophical, scientific, historical and policy considerations about emotions and expression. It is available to download as a PDF here.

For details of all our upcoming events see our Centre events page.

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About the Centre

The Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions, launched in November 2008, is the first research centre in the UK dedicated to the history of the emotions. One of its key objectives will be to provide a focus for interactions between social and cultural historians of the emotions on the one hand, and historians of science and medicine on the other.

The activities of the Centre relate to research themes such as:

  • Theoretical categories: passions, affections, sentiments, feelings, emotions
  • The idea of expression: using the emotional body to read the emotional mind
  • Madness: passions and pathology in medicine and psychiatry
  • Well-being: happiness, public health, and emotions as political objects
  • Difference: how have emotions associated with different races, sexes, and sexual orientations been experienced, categorised, and controlled?
  • Religion: religious practices and regimes of emotion
  • Law: the definition, control, and punishment of passions and emotions

To be added to the History of Emotions email list run by the Centre, please visit the JISCmail homepage for the list to sign up.

On this site you will find a list of members of the Centre, details of our past and future events, and links to related research centres in the UK and abroad, and to classic texts in the history of ideas about passions and emotions.