Experts meet to discuss emotions

Experts from fields as diverse as neuroscience and management will this week gather on the Sunshine Coast to discuss the study of emotions.

The 16th International Society for Research on Emotions conference will be held from July 11-15 at the Hyatt Regency Coolum. The conference will be hosted by UQ Business School in association with the University of the Sunshine Coast.

This year, the major themes of the conference will be the regulation of emotions, the role of emotions in organisations, and music and emotions.

Conference Program Chair, Professor Paul Griffiths from UQ’s School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics said the conference was designed to promote interdisciplinary exchange between the many different scientific fields that study emotions.

“Emotion research is fantastically diverse,” Professor Griffiths said.

“The conference will host everyone from aestheticians through psychologists and neuroscientists to management theorists.

“A conference like this prevents the balkanization of the field. A neuroscientist working on fear and an organizational psychologist working on emotional intelligence in the workplace can learn a lot from one another, but it is only at an interdisciplinary meeting like this that they will meet.”

Professor Griffiths said this year the conference would include a symposium in memory of one of the founders of the society, the late Robert Solomon, a notable writer on emotions who also appeared as the inspirational philosophy professor in the film Waking Life.

Media: Kaylene Ascough (3365 4222, k.ascough@uq.edu.au).