The conference serves as a collaborative platform, bringing together senior researchers and doctoral students with specialised expertise in emotion research, particularly within Eastern Europe and the Baltic Region.

Over the past few decades, social sciences have experienced a departure from earlier approaches that emphasized rationality and redirected their attention toward the comprehensive study of emotions. This intellectual shift, known as “the affective turn,” reshaped a wide range of social sciences disciplines, such as sociology, political science, and journalism (Lemmings & Brooks, 2014), producing seminal theories and concepts, such as emotional labor, teflon culture, emotion management, deep/surface acting, and many others (Hochschild, 1986; Bolton, 2005; Blix & Wettergren, 2018).

As with most research, studies related to the affective turn have been typically conducted in Western settings, and far less is known about emotion research conducted in non-Western contexts, particularly in Eastern Europe and Baltic states. Considering that emotional expression is culturally constructed and thus context-specific and that social structure can give rise to different emotional climates or structures of feelings (Williams, 1977), a dive into emotion research in the Baltic and Eastern Europe could highlight new contributions to the field.

The conference “The Affective Turn in Social Sciences: Emotion Research in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Region” aims to bring together doctoral students and senior researchers specialized in emotion research in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Region.
At the same time, the event seeks to establish an interdisciplinary forum for scholars interested in emotion research, foster networking opportunities, and facilitate future research collaborations.

The conference will feature a diverse group of doctoral students and senior researchers.

Confirmed participating senior researchers with prominent contributions to emotion research:

• Sharon Bolton is an Emeritus Professor in Management, Work, and Organization at the University of Stirling in Scotland, United Kingdom. She is best known for her research concerning the management of emotion in organisations and, most recently, her conceptualisation of different dimensions of dignity at work and how this translates into managerial practice.
• Johana Kotišová is a Senior FWO Postdoctoral Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Communication Sciences. She studied journalism and social anthropology and has a joint PhD in sociology. Johana’s research interests include crisis and conflict reporting, journalists’ safety, emotional labour, and mental well-being.
• Maja Sawicka is an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Warsaw. In her research, she draws on interactional approaches to emotion, studying the relationships between culture, transformations of social structure and individual experiences. In addition, she is a specialist in qualitative methods, including digital ethnography.
• Åsa Wettergren is professor in Sociology at Gothenburg University. In her research, she studies the role of emotions in bureaucratic organisations, politics and social movements, and migration. She founded the European Sociological Association’s Research Network in the Sociology of Emotions, RN 11, and is currently editor in chief for one of the leading journals for emotion research: Emotions and Society.

We warmly welcome all those interested in emotion research to join us, listen to the speakers, and engage in discussions!