By Faith Harvey
The study of emotion has expanded in recent years, and researchers now need to apply an interdisciplinary approach, says Rob Boddice, a historian of human experience.
Ya Zuo, a History professor at UCSB and convener of the History of Emotion Research Focus Group, holding Rob Bodicce’s book The History of Emotions.
“Points of disagreement are important and need to be worked out by mutually critical collaboration,” Boddice said last week as the inaugural speaker for the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s “Emotion in History” Research Focus Group series.
Based in both Canada and Finland, he is an author and a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experience (HEX) at Tampere University.
Boddice, who studies the history of emotions, has noticed that research into emotion expanded within the past two decades as an influx of scientists, historians, and psychologists began studying emotions, sensations, and experiences via their respective methods, ranging from brain scans to literary explorations.
Emotion historian Rob Boddice during his inaugural speech for the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s Research Focus Group . The talk was titled “Consensus without Collaboration? The Future of Emotion From the Perspective of History.”
Once he recognized a tension among the different approaches to research, he knew change needed to come. Boddice was pleased to find that UC Santa Barbara is working eagerly to create collaboration across disciplines by initiating its 2023 emotion focused research groups, spearheaded by historians and psychologists. The focus group hopes to cross cultures and extend beyond campus to make an impact on the study of emotions through an interdisciplinary lens.
“It’s as if we were working on different things,” Boddice said. He hopes to enlighten scholars of all backgrounds on the benefits of collaboration, because radically different methods are yielding similar results. “The core of ideas align, and that is where we should be.”
The IHC intends to hold digital workshops about emotion research and has invited experts of different fields to offer their nuanced views and findings on the subject of emotions, as well as to share their experiences in data collection.
Faith Harvey is a third-year UCSB student, majoring in Communication studies and minoring in Professional Writing. She is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.