History of Emotions Researchers

Alda Balthrop-Lewis studies emotions and their relevance to religion and politics, especially in their role as motivators and barriers to ecological ethics.

Michael Barbezat studies the history of emotions, particularly notions of love and of desire, in his explorations into how people in the past believed this world and the next were joined together.  

Susan Broomhall has longstanding interests in the relationship of gender with emotional performance, in early modern global contexts ranging from Europe to Korea.

Michael Champion studies language of emotion, rhetorical performance of emotion, and intersections between emotions, ancient ethics, asceticism, education, and history of violence.

Kylie Crabbe’s work on eschatology in the New Testament and its literary environment considers emotions such as hope and solace, while highlighting also the powerful contexts which shaped influential post-war interpretations of these texts; her work on impairment in early Christian texts likewise engages with affective responses both within the text and in response to it.

Ben Edsall is interested in intersections between New Testament studies and emotions, especially relating to emotions depicted and evoked by early Christian texts and deployed in shaping early Christian communities.

Lexi Eikelboom studies critical theories that identify how rhythm influences emotion and considers how those influences interact with theological ideas about embodiment and metaphysics.

Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga researches affective experience of charismatic Christian movements in Uganda and Rwanda, as well as the role of emotions in the context of peace and reconciliation studies.

Sarah Gador-Whyte studies how emotions and the senses shape lay participation in late-antique liturgical literature, and how emotions contribute to identity formation in interreligious dialogue texts.

Michael Hanaghan explores changing attitudes to anger, grief and fear from the Imperial period into Late Antiquity, predominantly in the Latin West.

Benjamin Moffitt studies contemporary populism across the globe, with a particular focus on the visual, affective and stylistic dimensions of the phenomenon. 

David Newheiser studies affects associated with hope, and their religious and political consequences.

Dawn LaValle Norman[Deputy Node Leader] studies how authors’ views about emotions shape the way that literature develops during the ancient and late ancient worlds.

Jonathan Zecher studies the construction and constraint of emotion in the cultural production of health across the medical, philosophical, and ascetic literature of Late Antiquity and the Byzantine world.