Andrea Vik from the Centre for the Politics of Feelings, University of London, visits the department and will give a talk on “Politics Embodied: The Bodily Experience of Political Emotions and its Political Consequences.”

Andrea Vik will also have some time for individual research meetings in the department between September 22-24 where she visits the EXDEM project. Please email Andrea Vik directly at Andrea.Vik@rhul.ac.uk if you would like to meet during her visit.

Short abstract: “Politics Embodied: The Bodily Experience of Political Emotions and its Political Consequences”.

Political emotions are now widely acknowledged as central drivers of democratic participation and polarization, yet their embodied dimensions - how they physically manifest and are experienced - remain largely unexplored. Studying the embodied nature of politics is essential because political emotions may be physiologically and experientially distinct from everyday emotions, shaping behavior, ideology, and conflict in uniquely powerful and polarizing ways. We introduce to political science and political psychology the well-validated emBODY-tool, which allows participants to report where in the body they feel sensations when they experience discrete emotions as experienced in everyday life (e.g., anger) or in a political context (e.g., `political anger'). Specifically, we will answer three main research questions: (1) how political emotions are embodied and differ from their non-political counterparts, (2) whether political dispositions influence how these political emotions are embodied, and (3) how embodied experiences interact with political dispositions in explaining political attitudes and behavior.

Short bio: Andrea Vik is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Politics of Feelings, University of London. Andrea Vik holds a PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Vik’s research is at the intersection of political representation and political psychology focusing on how emotions, affect, and political communication shape feelings of political representation and political attitudes. Part of Vik’s research is strongly inspired by the constructivist turn in political representation theory. Vik’s most recent paper has been published in British Journal of Political Science. Find more information about Andrea Vik’s research.