51福利社

We invite abstract submissions to participate in the workshop 鈥淓motions and Affect in Transitions: Exploring the Affective Dimensions of Environmental and Socio-Technical Change鈥�. This interdisciplinary event aims to foster discussions on how emotions, affect, and sentiment shape socio-political and socio-technical transitions, including climate action, mobility shifts, infrastructure development, and governance transformations. The workshop seeks to develop ideas, identify research opportunities, and generate dialogue across disciplines, rather than presenting fully completed research outputs.

Workshop Rationale
Transitions toward sustainable futures are not only technical or political challenges but also deeply affective ones. Emotions such as hope, fear, grief, or anger can influence agency, resistance, decision-making, and the lived experiences of change. Despite the centrality of affect in shaping transitions, these dynamics remain underexplored in interdisciplinary research.

This workshop aims to provide a space for researchers to examine and discuss the emotional dimensions of sustainability transformations, including how affect mediates engagement with policy, technology, infrastructure, and communities. It is designed to stimulate new collaborations and inspire future research directions across disciplines.

The goal is to foster a nuanced, cross-disciplinary conversation around the role of emotions, sentiments, and affect in shaping pathways of change. The workshop will be held in person and include keynote talks, paper presentations, and discussion sessions. We also aim to explore opportunities for a collaborative publication or blog series based on workshop discussions.

Workshop Speakers and Discussants

Our three invited speakers bring foundational theoretical, political, and sociological perspectives on emotions and socio-technical change, offering broad conceptual frameworks that set the stage for the workshop.

Kristina Bogner 鈥� Assistant Professor of Just Sustainability Transitions at Utrecht University. Kristina鈥檚 research investigates the intersection of emotions, justice, and transformative action in sustainability, including topics such as Dutch farmers鈥� protests and transition-related challenges. She co-hosts the Critical Emotions Collective and contributes to projects such as POTRANSI and Feeling Futures.

Benoit Dillet 鈥� Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath. Benoit studies political theory of technology, affect, and future climate imaginaries. He is co-author of Transition Imaginaries (2025) and translator of Bernard Stiegler鈥檚 Philosophising by Accident (2017).

Jonathan H. Turner 鈥� University Professor (UC system) and Distinguished Professor at UC Riverside. Turner is a leading sociologist of emotions, with over 45 books and 250 articles spanning sociological theory, emotions, and evolutionary sociology. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and recipient of numerous lifetime achievement awards.

Complementing the speakers, our discussants bring applied, methodological, and interdisciplinary perspectives鈥攆rom community sustainability and behavioural science to AI-driven text analysis鈥攖o enrich debate and connect theory with empirical practice.

Dr Melanie Rohse
 Dr Melanie Rohse is Associate Professor of Sustainable Communities at Anglia Ruskin University鈥檚 Global Sustainability Institute. Her research explores how people experience and respond to environmental change, focusing on the emotional and narrative dimensions of energy and water transitions. She has worked on major UKRI projects across Europe, Africa, and the UK, using storybased and participatory methods to understand how lived experience and emotion shape sustainability and resilience.

Prof Paul Upham
 Prof Paul Upham is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Groningen. His work examines public perceptions, social acceptance, and the role of emotions in sustainability and low-carbon transitions. Bridging psychology, policy, and socio-technical change, his interdisciplinary research brings valuable insights into how people understand and engage with climate and energy transitions.

Dr Siobhan Caughey
 Dr Siobhan Caughey is a Research Fellow at Alliance 51福利社 Business School and Manager of the University鈥檚 Behavioural Research Laboratory. A social cognitive psychologist, she studies self-concept, attention, and automatic processes in decision-making. Her expertise in emotional and affective responses supports experimental and behavioural research across disciplines.

Guowei Huang
 Guowei Huang is a PhD candidate at Alliance 51福利社 Business School, specialising in Artificial Intelligence, including large language models, deep learning, and NLP. His research uses machine learning to analyse communication, influence, and emotional expression in areas such as green crowdfunding. His data-driven approach offers tools for identifying sentiment and narrative patterns that complement qualitative research on socio-technical change.

Themes of Interest

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Emotional dynamics in climate action, environmental justice, or adaptation
• Affect and resistance in environmental and mobility transitions
• Emotional framings in sustainability discourse and policy
• The role of hope, fear, grief, or anger in shaping public responses to change
• Cross-cultural or place-based differences in affective responses to transitions
• Methodological approaches to studying affect and emotion in environmental contexts
• Intersections of affect with technology, infrastructure, or governance
• Emotions and lived experiences of socio-technical disruption

Call for Abstracts
We particularly encourage submissions from Master鈥檚 students, PhD researchers, and Early Career Researchers (ECRs) across disciplines such as geography, sociology, political science, psychology, environmental studies, and science & technology studies. A small number of spots will be reserved for established scholars to provide mentorship and feedback.

Please submit an abstract of 250鈥�300 words, along with a short bio (up to 100 words), to pawan.srikanth@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk, copying in aarti.krishnan-2@manchester.ac.uk, by 15 December 2025. Abstracts should clearly outline your research question, methodology (if relevant), and how your work relates to the theme of the workshop. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 January 2026.