Issue 13. 6 September 2010.pdf [PDF File, 1.7 MB] - UWA Staff - The ...

Chief investigators have
already written extensively
on emotions
Emotions have shaped our lives
continued from page 1
This is where researchers can start to examine continuities and discontinuities between modern
and pre-modern emotions and emotional responses.
“Emotions are fundamental to individual and social well-being, and understanding their history,
origins and changes over time and how they vary between individuals and mass emotions has
a lot to tell us about who we are today and how we react to social, political, environmental and
other modern day challenges,” said Winthrop Professor Susan Broomhall, deputy director of
the new Centre, which will start work at the beginning of next year.
The Centre’s director, Winthrop Professor Philippa Maddern, is in Europe, negotiating with
partners and collaborators, one of which is the Globe Theatre in London.
“Our research activities will be designed with practical knowledge transfer in mind, working with
creative arts industries and we hope that the Globe will become another of our partners,”
Professor Broomhall said.
Other industry partners are the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), ABC TV and WA Opera.
The Centre’s research will be conducted and presented through three major performance/
exhibition events: a Shakespearean drama production at Australia’s only replica Jacobean
theatre, UWA’s New Fortune; a Baroque opera in 2015 (partnered by WA Opera); and a major
exhibition of Australia’s relevant pre-modern art holdings in 2016-17 (partnered by the NGV).
Part of UWA’s contribution to the Centre will be the refurbishment of the New Fortune Theatre.
“The Centre will have practitioners-in-residence and vice-versa,” said Professor Broomhall.
“Our researchers will go out into industry and work with them.”
Allied with the practical approach, the Centre will pioneer new methods of interdisciplinary
research called collaboratories: innovative communication events at which, unlike usual
symposia, research will be produced – not just reported – through intensive exchanges of
disciplinary approaches, theories, methods and findings.
Four main research programs will form the framework of the Centre’s work.
Meanings, a program to determine how emotions have been identified, described and
expressed through intellectual, literary and social practices in Europe 1100 to 1800, will be led
by UWA’s Professor Bob White, an internationally renowned scholar of Shakespeare and early
modern English literature and drama.
Change will be led by Professor David Lemmings from the University of Adelaide. The program
will investigate the drivers of emotional changes in society and the power of collective emotions
to produce major cultural, social, political and economic change.
UWA’s Professor Jane Davidson, an outstanding creative practitioner and musicologist, will lead
the Performance program, to interrogate how emotions were performed and expressed in
pre-modern times. Her group will use reflective performances to enhance the understanding of
how pre-modern performers and artists constructed and expressed emotion.
The fourth and final program leader is Professor Stephanie Trigg from the University of
Melbourne, whose program, Shaping the Modern, will explore Europe’s legacy for emotional
understandings and practices in Australia today.
Professor Yasmin Haskell, UWA’s Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism, is one of
four free-floating chief investigators, the others based at the universities of Melbourne, Sydney
and Queensland.
International investigators are joining the Centre from Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, and
London and Newcastle in the UK.
Professor Haskell said the Centre’s research would include addressing mental health problems,
bringing in practitioners and researchers from the disciplines of psychology (including UWA’s
Professor Colin MacLeod, Director of the new Elizabeth Rutherford Memorial Centre for the
Advancement of Research into Emotion), psychiatry and population health.
Renowned neuroscientist, Professor German Berrios (Cambridge) is only
one of several stellar international figures excited to be joining the
Advisory Board of the Centre.
“It’s wonderful to get support from the whole university. One of our
greatest champions has been Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Alistar
Robertson (an agricultural scientist), who has consistently argued
for the importance of humanities research and encouraged us to
persevere with our ideas,” Professor Haskell said.
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UWA NEWS 6 September 2010
The University of Western Australia