Collective emotions, societal movements, and social groups
A workshop organized by the COGS project
7–8 July 2025
University of Bern, Switzerland
Collective emotions, societal movements, and social groups
A workshop organized by the COGS project
7–8 July 2025
University of Bern, Switzerland
DAY 1 — 7 July
10:00–11:15 – Ruth Rebecca Tietjen (Tilburg University) – “Communities of the Lonely”
11:15–12:30 – Constant Bonard (University of Bern) – “Collective Emotions and Value-Based Groups”
12:30–14:15 – Lunch Break
14:15–15:30 – Paulina Kraft (Humboldt University of Berlin) – “Hoping Together. How Hope Assures (but Does Not Motivate)”
15:30–16:00 – Break
16:00–17:15 – Margaret Gilbert (UC Irvine) – “Collective Emotions: Some Reflections” – This talk will be online. To attend via Zoom, contact Constant Bonard: constant.bonard@unibe.ch until 4 July.
DAY 2 — 8 July
10:00–11:15 – Mikko Salmela (University of Helsinki) – “The Emotional Dynamics of Anti- and Pro-Democratic Political Movements: Empirically Informed Theory and Some New Empirical Evidence”
11:15–12:30 – Nathan Biglietti (Institut Jean Nicod, ENS-PSL) – “Collective Emotions, the Sense of Togetherness, and the Dynamics of Group Identification in Social Movements”
12:30–14:00 – Lunch Break
14:00–15:15 – Emma Wolton (Institut Agro Angers & Institut Jean Nicod, ENS-PSL) – “Solastalgia: A Collective and Motivating Emotion in Anti-Extraction Movements”
15:15–16:30 – Hans Bernhard Schmid (University of Vienna) – “Social Movement, Collective Emotion, and Organization”
The workshop will focus on the influence and importance of collective emotions for societal movements and social groups. It aims to explore how insights from the study of (collective) emotions – drawing on affective sciences, the philosophy of emotion, social ontology, or social psychology – can illuminate the role that collective emotions play, or fail to play, in the structuring of societal movements and social groups.
Societal movements and social groups often include or leverage collective emotions. Salient examples include calls for heightened emotional responses to ecological crises, such as fear and outrage in climate activism; the use of national pride or resentment in the mobilization of populist movements; or the potential manipulation of collective emotions in propaganda to steer public opinion. Other examples include the role of shared grief in solidarity after tragedies, collective euphoria in sports and its impact on fan communities, the fostering of hope and determination within grassroots campaigns for social justice, or collective guilt as a driver of reparative actions, like addressing historical injustices and advocating for restorative policies.
This workshop seeks to address questions such as:
Do collective emotions merely reflect shared evaluations and motivations, do they play a direct causal role in initiating societal changes, or does another kind of relation explain the strong links between collective emotions, societal movements, and social groups?
Do specific collective emotions (e.g. indignation, fear, pride) play a particularly influential role in societal movements and social groups?
How can research on emotions and collective intentionality help us understand the potential positive and negative roles of collective emotions in social and political contexts?
What ethical concerns emerge from the roles of collective emotions in societal movements and social groups?
Participation is free and does not require registration. If you would like to join the participants and organizers for lunch, please contact Constant Bonard until 29 June: constant.bonard@unibe.ch.
The workshop will take place in person, except for the contribution by Margaret Gilbert, which will take place online. To attend via Zoom, contact Constant Bonard until 4 July: constant.bonard@unibe.ch.
Seminar room 220
Mittelstrasse 43 (Uni Mittelstrasse Building),
University of Bern,
Switzerland
This workshop is made possible thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Society for Applied Philosophy (https://www.appliedphil.org/) as well as by the SERI-funded ERC Starting Grant Project “Collective Guilt and Shame” (https://www.benjaminmatheson.com/cogs.html).
The photograph of the banner is from Cyril Porchet's Crowd series.