An international scholarly conference exploring how emotion operates across media production, representation, and audience engagement.

The Media and Emotion conference is hosted by The Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice, in the Faculty of Media, Science and Technology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.

Draft Conference Programme

If you are a presenter you need to advise us of any edits to your conference paper or title before 15th July, 2026. Also if you have not registered for the conference by 15th August, 2026, your name will be removed from the programme.

In addition to presenters, we welcome 'attendees only' as they will form a valuable part of the conference collegiate sharing experience.

The conference consists of: 2 days with 85 papers/creative events in 25 panels, 4 keynote events, lunches and refreshment breaks for both days, optional self-funded conference meal, student rates and on campus accommodation available (subject to availability).

Registration fee: including refreshments and lunch for two days:

Presenter: £140 (students, part time employment)

Presenter: £170 (full time employment)

Attendee only: £140 (students, part time employment)

Attendee only: £170 (full time employment)

Talbot campus accommodation (subject to availability- 30 rooms availability)

£75 for three nights (6th, 7th and 8th September),

additional night available for extra £25 (5th September)

NOTE:

Houses to be prepared with single rooms only to be made up prior to arrival with shared facilities. NB: bedding is provided, but residents will need to bring own towels.

Houses do not come with 'kitchenalalia' (although there is an oven, there are no utensils, pots, pans, crockery, cutlery etc).

Parking needs to be arranged through conference organises, who will engage with Parking Services

Other accommodation in Bournemouth: Talbot campus is between 2.0 - 2.5 miles from the centre of the city, and the beaches. There are student buses, and taxis are easily available to get around. The University has agreed reduced rates with a range of hotels in Bournemouth. For example, you can stay with The Oceana Group of Hotels,which hotels are mostly situated on the East Cliff area. Please contact the Central Reservations Team below, quoting Bournemouth University BB rate, this includes staying at The Ocean Beach Hotel in a standard single bedded room from £47.50 per night or a sea view twin from £87.50 per night. Also, you can stay in The Green House taking a Standard double room at £95.00. Additionally, as Bournemouth has so many hotels, remember that online sites such as Booking.com and Trivago often have great rates available.

Conference Call for papers - https://sites.google.com/view/media-emotion-conference/

In the era of populism, political leaders deploy emotionally charged narratives, in offering simple answers to complex problems, often with minority groups as the targets of division and abjection. Also, techniques of production and representation deploy the language of emotion, in aesthetic and narrative-oriented contexts, and theoretical work is constantly evolving.

As neuroscientist Raymond J. Dolan observes, “emotion provides the principal currency in human relationships as well as the motivational force for what is best and worst in human behaviour” (2002). Within contemporary media production and consumption, emotion often binds us together, at times appearing as a language of intimacy, vulnerability and reflexivity, and conversely as a language of division, entitlement and exclusion. Therefore, emotions expressed and evoked through media have attracted sustained scholarly attention across a wide range of disciplines, spanning the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.

As Laura U. Marks discussed in her landmark text The Skin of Film (1999), contemporary media offers a creative space for issues of touch, memory and hegemonic challenge, invigorated through a media-based emotional landscape. Also, Sara Ahmed has theorised in The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014), that ‘affective economies’ and ‘sticky associations’ shape our phenomenological landscapes, defining boundaries for minority voices as much as offering spaces for resistance and reinvention.

This conference interrogates these ideas, including contributions from across film and media studies, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, communication and creative practice, engaging with topics such as:

• Affect, spectatorship, and emotional engagement

• Media, empathy, and social cognition

• Representation, identity, and stigma

• Emotion in digital and social media environments

• Political and cultural contexts (e.g. populism, conflict, inequality)

• Practice-based and industry perspectives

CONFIRMED KEYNOTES:

Lisa Blackman (Professor in Media and Communications – Goldsmiths University) - whose work includes:

● Grey Media: A Psychopolitics of Deception (Punctum Books 2026).

● Haunted Data: Affect, T

Description supplied by the event organiser.