Rob Boddice
Transdisciplinary Implications of a Biocultural Consensus in Emotion Research
Across the disciplines, from anthropology, sociology and history to primatology, social psychology, transcultural psychiatry, social neuroscience, and neurophilos-ophy, there is a growing consensus among researchers of emotions and senses that biology and culture are dynamically related and entangled in the production of meaningful human experience. The nature/nurture dyad has collapsed in favor of enactivism, predictive processing, brain-body plasticities, and a novel form of constructivism that understands body-minds and worlds to be mutually, if unstably, co-constituted. There is broad agreement about the importance of situated conceptual development, social structure, and material culture but so far there is little collaborative research being undertaken to capitalize on this consensus. Here I present the problem as one of siloed knowledge-production practices and closed disciplinary logics that can be overcome. Looking forward, I envision a role for historical emotion research as a stakeholder and wayfinder in a transdisciplinary space.
Rob Boddice is a historian of emotions, experience, science, and medicine, with special interests in pain, medical experimentation, and interdisciplinary engagement. He has a Ph.D. from the University of York and currently works as Senior Research Fellow at the Research Council of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX), Tampere University. He previously held positions at Bard College Berlin, Harvard University, McGill University, the Max Planck Insti-tute for Human Development, and Freie Universität Berlin. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Finnish Historical Society. Recent publications include Knowing Pain: A History of Sensation, Emotion, and Experience (2023); A History of Feelings (2019; Die Geschichte der Gefühle 2020); The History of Emotions (2018); Pain: A Very Short Introduction (2017); The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization (2016); Edward Jenner (2015); and Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments (2011).