Conference details
Fear Studies in an Age of Fear
A One-Day Conference at the University of Warwick
31 January 2025
‘Fear Studies in an Age of Fear’ is the inaugural event of the ‘The Fear Network’: a cross-faculty research group at the University of Warwick bringing together people interested in how ‘negative’ emotions — fear, anxiety, humiliation, disgust, and so on – shape cultural and political life.
Please find the conference programme below. It is being held at the University's dedicated conference facilities in Scarman house, which can provide bed and breakfast accommodation. See here for more details of how to book this.
Provisional registration is now open and can be completed here. The booking form to pay the conference fee will follow in a separate email before January to those that have registered.
The conference fee is:
Full-time/permanent staff: £30
Students and contractual staff: £20
Online attendance: £10
For those attending in person, this includes lunch as well as refreshments in the morning and afternoon.
Conference Programme
8.30-9.00: Registration and coffee
9.00-9.15: Welcome
9.15-10.30: World-Gothic/Grotesque/Horror: Fictions of Fear in an Age of World-Ecological Crisis
World-Gothic in Theory
Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus University
Extraction, Banquets, and the World-Grotesque in Gwledd/The Feast (2021)
Elliott Berggren, Linnaeus University
World-Horror and the World-Food-System Crisis
Johan Höglund, Linnaeus University
10.30-10.45: Break
10.45-12.15: Narratives of Fear, Survival, and Socialization: Exploring Memory, Violence, and Anxiety in Conflict-Affected Spaces
Fear in the Field: Reflections on Narratives of “Peace” in Colombia
Jamie Shenk, University of Warwick
Decolonial Critical Theory: A Dialectic of Survival
Teodora Todorova, University of Warwick
Political Socialization: Analysing Age, Period and Cohort Effects on Worry about Crime and Disorder
Emily Gray, University of Warwick
Murmurations From an Abusive Flock: Fear, Belonging and the Police
Dipbuk Panchal, University of Warwick
12.15-1.15: Lunch
1.15-2.45: Histories of Fear
Civilizing Fear: Virtue and Terror in Classical Greece and Revolutionary France
Xavier Buxton, University of Cyprus / University of Warwick
Savage Encounters, Fear and the Evangelical/Modern Subject
Claire Blencowe, University of Warwick
The Anxiety and Fear of Communication: What Can We Learn from Eighteenth-Century Letters?
Rachel Bynoth, Bath Spa University
Fear and the Environment in the 1800s U.S. Plantation South
Mia Edwards, University of Warwick
2.45-3.00: Break
3.00-4.15: Embodying the State: Presence, Disgust and Outrage in the Performance of Power
Political Affects and Embodied States
Henrique Carvalho, University of Warwick
Disgust at the Border: Border Work as Dirty Work
Ana Aliverti, University of Warwick
Circuits of Outrage Against and Within the English State of Homelessness
Simon Tawfic, University of Warwick
4.15-4.30: Break
4.30-5.45: Psychologies of Fear
What are We Anxious About? Applying Philosophical Insights to Psychology
Maria Balaska, University of Hertfordshire / Åbo Akademi University, Finland
What Do I Want (You) To Feel? Investigating Emotion Goals in Children, Adolescents, and Adults
Michaela Gummerum, University of Warwick
(How) Can We Study Horror Better?
G. Neil Martin, Regent’s University London
5.45: Close and drinks
