İlke İmer, Claudia Liebelt und Mayıs Tokel (Freie Universität Berlin), Jonas Harbke, Simon Koschut und Gabriela Pancheva (Zeppelin Universität)

Sprache: English

How are emotion and affect conceptualized and approached from different perspectives? Which methodologies make them visible, describable, and analytically accessible in the first place? These questions arise—in different ways—both in the political science field of International Relations and in the anthropological study of sensory perceptions. The round table takes these shared conceptual and methodological challenges as its point of departure.

At the center of the discussion are two research projects from the CRC “Affective Societies”. Project D04 “Affective Contestation: Dynamics of a Contested Emotional Politics in European Migration Policy“ examines affective dynamics in political conflict, social movements, and international relations. Project D08 “Olfactory Belonging: Contested Scents in Urban Publics” explores olfactory affect and their significance for power dynamics in urban publics. Both projects operate at the intersection of theory, empirical research, and methodology, asking how affects and emotions become effective across different fields of social life.

The round table brings together a range of perspectives and levels of experience. Alongside conceptual inputs from the principal investigators, junior researchers will share insights from their fieldwork and reflect on their methodological practices. Together, the participants will also discuss how exchange across projects and disciplines—made possible by the interdisciplinary framework of the CRC Affective Societies—has shaped and advanced their work, opening up new theoretical and methodological connections.

The round table invites participants to think emotion and affect research across perspectives and to jointly explore how elusive affective processes can be studied empirically.