Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice

The aim of the research under this theme is to explore how conflict and disaster are represented in today's media environment in mainstream, new and social media. Today’s technology allows us to witness events we would never have seen before in almost real time. But how does journalism deal with the ethical challenges posed by instant communication? How is user-generated content changing the way news stories are covered? What feelings are stirred up by such processes and how are they managed by those concerned?  How do those feelings become entangled with the wider socio-political and cultural environment where discourses of risk and catastrophe provide a context for the work of journalists and other practitioners working in the field of conflict?

It is often said that we live in an age of anxiety, where the old social structures of selfhood and belonging have shifted and become unmoored. Such transformations have implications for our relationship to political, cultural and societal institutions and also the shaping of psychosocial identities within that shifting context. Research under this theme unpacks these ideas by looking at a number of overlapping areas that include the psychosocial drivers of polarisation and extremism; patterns of feeling underpinning the rise of different types of populism; the emotional foundations of good enough democratic processes; and questions of societal cohesion, including conflict and reconciliation, and the experience of shared values and a sense of belonging. Questions of leadership and the powerful emotions and fantasies that shape the identification with political leaders both in fictional and non-fictional contexts also contribute to the research under this theme.

This research theme addresses the ways in which emotion is performed in a variety of psychosocial settings and it analyses their representation (factual and fictional) in terrains such as political culture, film, documentary, animation and news media. Today, the boundary between public and private experience is increasingly blurred as emotional experience and its performance is increasingly prominent in different contexts. The research under this theme takes account of the ‘emotional turn’ in culture and society, and explores its impact upon the self in conjunction with the role of affect and unconscious fantasy. For example, this research addresses the performance of emotion in relation to the notion of casino politics and also narcissistic styles of leadership in age of populism and celebrity politics. Researchers under this theme also explore the emotional work of creative practitioners that address the tensions between the emotionalisation of politics and news journalism and normative values of objectivity and detachment. Those distinctions also tap into the gendering of emotion, its meanings in both public life and in more personal settings where the power dynamics of emotion take on a particular significance. Alongside more traditional forms of research, practice-based researchers under this theme set out to capture affective experience and its expression through the use of location video, the television studio, sound and animation, working across both documentary and drama.

It sometimes feels as though our daily diet of news is dominated by unrelenting violence, disaster and personal tragedy. How does journalism report responsibly and ethically on these news stories and on people caught up in traumatic events? And how can journalists safeguard their own mental health when exposed to constant depictions of suffering? This research theme explores a topic that until recently was hardly discussed among journalists where a once macho culture stigmatised issues of trauma and emotion. Today, however, there is an increasing focus on how journalists can best interview people caught up in violent news stories without running the risk of re-traumatisation. This research theme investigates the tensions between journalism’s normative values of objectivity and detachment, and empathic interview techniques designed to gain the trust of victims and survivors of trauma. A related theme explores the affective dimension of journalism practice and the relationship between emotion, trauma and objectivity norms.

As events swirl around us and we try to make sense of our lives in the context of the huge, complicated narratives of the contemporary world, a single conversation, expression or gesture or even an image of the landscape we inhabit will sometimes bring events into focus. Research under this theme explores the ways in which new methodologies can be developed in order to capture the emotional complexities and affective experience of the late modern world. Such methods apply new qualitative psychosocial understandings of film, video and animation practice to communicate how people think and feel and capture the ways in which thought and feeling are inseparable when listening to and understanding the complexities of contemporary experience. The kinds of methods that are deployed under this theme include ethnography, reflexivity and free associative narrative research to acknowledge the role of affect and the interweaving of social and psychological processes in shaping the research experience and its findings. Examples of such methods in action include: participatory models of filmmaking to address conflict within the home, the use of video to turn research data into the 'felt' experience of being a patient living with pain; using art and animation to work through the relational dynamics of mother-daughter relationships in China, and hosting reflective psychosocial groups to work through the conflicts between Brexit ‘leavers’ and ‘remainers’.

For survivors of conflict and human rights abuses, the normality of their everyday life, family and social fabric may be lost forever. Each has an individual story of suffering and loss and of lessons learnt, though often such voices are not heard. Research under this theme unpacks the theory and practice of so-called ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘transitional justice’, and also the emotions that underpin them, to explore the meaning and interplay between the perspectives of individuals and affected communities using rights-based and other approaches. The ubiquity of displaced peoples and the psychosocial struggles they face are also found in cultural and media representations where discourses of marginalisation are articulated and contribute to the environment in which the experiences of suffering, loss and hope take place, thereby providing a further context for this area of research.

Brylla, C., 2023. Documentary and Stereotypes - Reducing Stigma through Factual Media. Palgrave Macmillan.

Brylla, C. and Kramer, M. (eds.) 2018. Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Palgrave Macmillan.

Brylla, C. and Hughes, H. (eds.) 2017. Documentary and Disability. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gerodimos, R. (ed), 2022. Interdisciplinary Applications of Shame/Violence Theory. Palgrave Macmillan.

Jukes, S., 2022. News Agencies - Anachronism or Lifeblood of the Media System?. Routledge.

Klinkner, M. and Davis, H., 2020. The Right to the Truth in International Law. Routledge, Human Rights Series.

Yates, C., 2019. Emotion, Affect, in Stavrakakis, Y.  (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory. Routledge.

Brylla, C. and Kramer, M., 2018. A Pragmatic Framework for the Cognitive Study of Documentary. Projections – The Journal for Movies and the Mind, 12(2).

Brylla, C. 2018. Bypassing the Supercrip Trope in Documentary Representations of Blind Visual Artists. Disability Studies Quarterly. 38(3).

Brylla, C. 2018. Performativity on the Margin: Pornography: The Musical (2003). Film Studies. 18(1).

Ayisi, F. and Brylla, C. 2014. See Me, Know Me – Cultural Expressions of Cameroonian Women. Stimulus Respond – Africa. No. 25. Autumn.

Ayisi, F. and Brylla, C. 2013. The Politics of Representation and Audience Reception. Research in African Literatures - Visibility in African Cultures. 44(2). 

Fowler-Watt, K. 2020. The auto/biographical journalist and stories of lived experience, Career Construction Theory and Life Writing. Special Edition of Life Writing. 17(1).

Fowler-Watt, K., and McDougall, J., 2019. Media Literacy vs Fake News: Fact checking and verification in the era of fake news and post truths, Journalism Education, 8(1).

Jukes, S., 2019. Reporting Global While Being Local - Commentary for Special Issue of Journalism Studies. Journalism Studies, 20(12), pp.1798-1802.

Kang, K., 2019. On the problem of the justification of river rights. Water International, 44 (6-7), 667-683.

Kang, K., 2019. Reformulating ‘Holism’ in hydropower decision-making. Systems Research and Behavioural Science.

McDonald, K., 2022. The Radio Phone-In and the Suicidal Caller. In: Chignell, H., ed. Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio. Bloomsbury Academic Press.

Richards, B., 2019. Beyond the angers of populism. Journal of Psychosocial Studies 12(1-2):171-183.

Yates, C., 2019. ‘The Psychodynamics of Casino Culture and Politics’. Journal of Psychosocial Studies, (12) 3: 217-230.  

Richards, B., 2019. The postmodern election. In, Daniel Jackson, Einar Thorsen, Darren Lilleker and Nathalie Weidhase, eds. (2019) UK Election Analysis 2019: Media, Voters and the Campaign. Early reflections from leading academics. Bournemouth: CPMR, Bournemouth University. 

Tabitha A. Baker., 2021. What to expect from post-pandemic voting behaviour

Yates, C., 2019. Unleashing Optimism in an Age of Anxiety. In, Daniel Jackson, Einar Thorsen, Darren Lilleker and Nathalie Weidhase, eds. (2019) UK Election Analysis 2019: Media, Voters and the Campaign. Early reflections from leading academics. Bournemouth: CPMR, Bournemouth University.

Prof Candida Yates - Professor of Culture and Communication

Dr Sue Sudbury - Associate Professor of Media Practice

Dr Catalin Brylla (deputy director) - Principal Lecturer in Film and Television 

Dr Tabitha Baker - Lecturer in Politics for Humanities and Law

Prof Richard Berger - Professor of Media and Education

Dr Roman Gerodimos - Professor of Global Current Affairs

Dr Antje Glueck - Lecturer in Multi-Media Journalism

Dr Trevor Hearing - Principal Academic

Dr Samantha Iwowo - Principal Lecturer in Directing Drama, Film & TV

Dr Melanie Klinkner - Principal Academic in Law

Dr Ellie Smith - Researcher on AHRC Funded Project

Dr Chindu Sreedharan - Principal Academic in Journalism & Communication

Dr Savvas Voutyras - Lecturer in Politics

Prof Stephen Jukes - Emeritus Professor

Prof Barry Richards - Emeritus Professor

Dr Jenny Alexander - Senior Lecturer in Media and Advertising

Prof Sara Ashencaen Crabtree - Professor of Social and Cultural Diversity

Dr Nicolette Barsdorf-Liebchen - Lecturer in Legal Practice

Prof Katharine Cox - Professor and Head Of Department For Humanities and Law

Dr Alina Dolea - Deputy Head Of Department In Humanities And Law

Dr Karen Fowler-Watt - Senior Principal Academic

Dr Gloria Khamkar - Senior Lecturer in Journalism

Siobhan Lennon-Patience

Dr Reina-Marie Loader - Senior Lecturer in Film Production

Dr Carolina Machado Oliveira - Lecturer in Factual

Dr James Matthews - Principal Academic in Communication and Media

Dr Kathryn McDonald - Principal Academic in Audio Production

Dr Gaye Orr - Senior Lecturer in Law

Prof Jonathan Parker - Professor of Society & Social Welfare

Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers - Principal Academic

Karolina Szopa - Lecturer in Law

Prof Einar Thorsen - Executive Dean Media and Communication

Dr Jonathan Whittle - Lecturer In Law

Dr Christa Van Raalte - Deputy Dean & Associate Professor in Film and Television

Dr Xin Zhao - Lecturer in Marketing Communications

Dr. Luke Eda - Lecturer in Law (University of West England)

Brett Kahr - Psychotherapist, author, broadcaster, consultant (Visiting Professor)

Gavin Rees - Director of Dart Centre Europe (Visiting Fellow)

Prof Candida Yates

I am an interdisciplinary researcher, author and teacher. I have a background in Psychosocial Studies and its application to politics, culture, emotion and society, and I have published many books and articles in that field. If you are interested in discussing your plans for a PhD research project, do please get in touch: [email protected].

• Supervision topics: Brexit and emotion amongst leavers and remainers, emotional responses to women as political leaders, a psycho-political analysis of positive psychology and society, therapy culture and reality TV, psychoanalysis and the culture of conspiracy theories, violence and the history of group identity in Turkey, narcissism, shame and social media  
• Current PhD students: Callum Blades: “A Psychosocial Analysis of Conspiracy Theories”, Mustafa Selek: “A Psychosocial Inquiry into the Development of Violent Behaviour That is Politically Oriented”, Begum Elcin Ulucan: “Identity Transformation and Violence in Turkey”, Burak Uzunova: “Euroscepticism and Nationalism: A Comparison between the United Kingdom and Turkey”, “An Exploration through Animation Practice into the Familial Bond Between Mothers and Daughters.” 

Other PhD Students of CESJ Members:

Phillip Barber: Exploring the aesthetic platforms of radicalisation, counter-culture and conspiracy - supervisors: Julian McDougall, Catalin Brylla

Mark Bond: Digital visions: a study examining the interplay of new digital technologies, agile working and craft knowledge in cinematographic practice - supervisors: Trevor Hearing, Sue Sudbury

Emanuele Bussa: The evolution of the role of stringers and citizen journalists in reporting wars and conflicts: the case of the Syrian civil war

Elcin Begum: Identity transformation and violence

Michael George: Social Movements for Change in Africa: Digital Dissent in Hashtag Activism - supervisors: Darren Lilleker, Catalin Brylla,

Xue Han: An exploration through animation practice of the familial bond between mothers and daughters - supervisors: Sue Sudbury, Candida Yates

Yixing Huang: Exploring approaches to the interview within contemporary Chinese documentary practice

Areerut Jaipadub: An examination of the relationship between filmmaker and subject in Thai context of documentary filmmaking - supervisors: Sue Sudbruy, Trevor Hearing

Michael Koufalitakis (MRes): From ideological politics to the politics of emotions in Greece

Siobhan Lennon Patience: What does it mean to flourish? A psychosocial investigation

Searchmore Muridzo: Broadcast over Zimbabwe - 1980-2020

Luke Nwibo Eda: Missing Migrants: legal obligations and psychosocial implications for families

Liting Qiao: Chinese Animation Documentary: Culture, Soft-power and Classification - supervisors: Paula Callus, Catalin Brylla

Jess Ruddock: Voices from Behind Closed Doors: participatory film-making inside a refuge for survivors of domestic abuse - supervisors: Sue Sudbury, Lee-Ann Fenge

Martin Sharp: Film direction incorporating a constructed theory of emotions: an auto-ethnographic inquiry into the implications for psychologically realistic acting - supervisors: Catalin Brylla, Changhong Liu

Amy Tatum: A psycho-political study of the responses to women as political leaders in the United Kingdom - supervisors: Candida Yates

Jo Tyler: Investigating the process of adaptation and concept as curation, through the key relationships in production of a graphic novel for radio - supervisors: Julia Round, Richard Berger

Elcin Ulucan: Identity transformation and violence

Zaineh al-Zoubi: Aljazeera's role in the Syrian uprising