I’ve recently begun a new research focus, looking at well-being in higher education. British universities have started to focus on this issue a lot more, spurred by worrying headlines about an ‘epidemic of mental illness on campus’. But, judging … Continue reading
Earlier this year, Anthony Seldon, the new vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, announced he was making Buckingham into the UK’s first ‘positive university’. All students will take a course in Positive Psychology. All tutors will be trained in Positive … Continue reading
Tiffany Watt Smith is a research fellow on the ‘Living with Feeling’ grant at the Centre for the History of the Emotions. She is the author of The Book of Human Emotions and On Flinching: Theatricality and Scientific Looking from Darwin to Shell-Shock … Continue reading
After the summer lull, the start of term is always a busy time. In case you’ve missed any blog posts, here’s our second round-up of 2016 (the first was in July). These are listed in chronological order by month of … Continue reading
Dr Eleanor Betts recently completed her PhD in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, researching Victorian responses to children who killed. Eleanor continues to work with the Centre for the History of the Emotions and is … Continue reading
A Conversation With Charles Foster Charles Foster’s Being a Beast (Profile, 2016) is an extraordinary book about the author’s life-long fascination with the minds of animals and his attempts to see the world through their eyes – to feel their sensations, … Continue reading
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body, is an excellent new book by science journalist Jo Marchant, which explores the healing (and harming) power of the mind and emotions over the body. It succintly brings together a … Continue reading
Dr Una McIlvenna is Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Kent. From 2011-2014 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, based at the University of … Continue reading
This is a guest-post by author and psychologist Hilda Reilly. Playthings, Alex Pheby’s second novel, is based on the case of Daniel Paul Schreber, a 19th century German judge afflicted by schizophrenia. Unusually for a patient of that era, he wrote … Continue reading
Professor William M. Reddy is William T. Laprade Professor of History and Professor of Cultural Anthropology, at Duke University. Here he reviews Professor Jan Plamper‘s introduction to the field. Jan Plamper, The History of Emotions: An Introduction, translated by Keith Tribe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), … Continue reading