Affect and Emotion: Social Theory for the 21st Century

Christian von Scheve is Professor of Sociology, specializing in the sociology of emotions at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is also a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). His work broadly examines how culture and social structure influence how people feel, think, and interact, thereby reproducing or transforming social order. His current research focuses on collective emotions, political conflict, polarization, and grievance politics. He has recently co-edited, with Jan Slaby, two Routledge volumes on Key Concepts in Affective Societies (2019 & 2026).

Jan Slaby is Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Emotion at Freie Universität Berlin. He works on many topics connected to affect and emotion, and develops what he calls a political philosophy of mind — an integrative framework that brings enactivism, extended and embodied mind approaches into dialogue with critical theory, phenomenology, and social philosophy, asking how societal structures produce, shape, and often deform, mental capacities and affective lives.

Affect and emotion are among his central concerns: as dynamic relational forces that bind individuals to their environments while constituting the shifting core of selfhood and subjectivity. His current work develops a theory of societal unfeeling — diagnosing the affective underpinnings of destructive society-nature relations. Recent publications include the articles Structural Apathy (2023) and Habits of Affluence (2024). He has co-edited, with Christian von Scheve, two Routledge volumes on Key Concepts in Affective Societies (2019 & 2026).

Irem Karamik holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations at Hacettepe University. Her doctoral research focused on the visual theory of international relations, foreign policy, and emotions. She is also a lecturer and Erasmus+ Institutional Coordinator at Mardin Artuklu University, where she teaches courses on Political Psychology, Postcolonial Discourses, and the Nation-State. She obtained her master’s degree from the University of Birmingham in the UK as a Jean Monnet scholar.

Between 2025 and 2026, Erman Ermihan has been a postdoctoral researcher at Bilkent University. Ermihan completed his doctorate in the Department of International Relations at Kadir Has University in 2025, after receiving his bachelor’s degree in the same department at Istanbul Bilgi University and his master’s degree in Political Science at Sabancı University. His research and areas of interest include Turkey-European Union relations, Turkish foreign policy, ontological security, and identity and emotions in foreign policy. His publications have been featured in journals such as the Journal of European Integration, Turkish Studies, All Azimuth, and International Relations.