PUBLIC LECTURE: The Meaning of Feeling: emotion as an interdisciplinary field of study

Abstract: Emotion, as an object of study, is common ground for a number of disciplines whose objective is the understanding of human life. While neuroscientists explore the biological mechanisms of emotion, anthropologists and sociologists explore its cultural meanings and its role in social life, psychologists study its impact on memory and cognition, geographers examine how it attaches people ot places and arts scholars explore its literary and artistic expression. For the most part, each discipline pursues its line of enquiry with little reference to what the others have to offer. This lecture will consider what the different disciplines have to stay about the study of emtoin, and whether a truly interdisciplinary understanding is possible.

Biographical note: Kay Milton is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast. Since the mid-1980s she has specialised in research on environmental issues. Her publications include Environmentalism and cultural theory (Routledge 1996) and the edited collection Environmentalism: the view from anthropology (Routledge 1993); and Loving nature: towards an ecology of emotion (Routledge 2002). A leading environmental anthropologist whose innovative work on human motivation and emotion is breaking new ground in the study of relationships between people and the landscapes they inhabit, Kay Milton's work is essentially interdisciplinary,drawing on the insights of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ecology and anthropology.

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