To mark the launch of the Legacy Sessions, Markus Lange, Managing Director of CRC 1171 Affective Societies, gives an interview to the online magazine campus.leben. In it, he outlines the central aims of the series and situates it within the final funding phase of the Collaborative Research Centre. At the same time, he explains to a broader audience why emotions are essential to understanding contemporary social conflicts and what role the CRC’s research plays in this context.

The key insight is clear: societies cannot be understood without emotions. And perhaps it is not enough to analyse them alone. “Stable and resilient forms of coexistence require empathy, confidence, and solidarity,” says Markus Lange. How these can be strengthened may become one of the central questions for future research.