The international workshop “Bridging Emotions: Affect in Overcoming Social and Political Divides” took place at Keio University, Tokyo, on 16 May 2026. Organized by Takemitsu Morikawa (Keio University, Faculty of Letters) and Christian von Scheve (Free University of Berlin, Visiting Professor at Keio University), the workshop was held in a hybrid format. While Hao Yang (Keio University, Graduate School of Human Relations), Yuri Keum (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and Alma Jeftic (University of Geneva) delivered their presentations in person at Keio University, all other speakers joined online. This format made a genuinely international discussion possible, with participants distributed across several regions and countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, and Israel.
In the opening remarks, the workshop was framed around a central question: how can emotions contribute not only to social and political conflict, but also to the bridging of divides? Recent research has extensively examined the destructive force of negative emotions such as anger, fear, resentment, humiliation, and hatred in affective polarization, intergroup hostility, exclusion, and misrecognition. The workshop shifted attention to the less systematically explored constructive and ambivalent roles of emotions: how they enable recognition, sustain fragile coexistence, foster accountability, or make cooperation imaginable under conditions of deep disagreement.
The presentations addressed these questions from a wide range of theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives. Gül Mescioglu Gür’s (American University, Washington) paper on the Cyprus conflict proposed the idea of “thin bridging emotions,” showing how trust, restraint, selective remembering, and strategic silence may sustain everyday cooperation without resolving historical conflict. Hao Yang examined the emotional foundations of nationalism in late nineteenth-century China, focusing on pride, shame, humiliation, dignity, and anger in the discourse of Chinese intellectuals. Yuri Keum analyzed migrant children and citizenship through the concept of an “emotional template,” arguing that ideas of innocence, vulnerability, compassion, and collective responsibility can reshape the boundaries of membership. Alma Jeftic presented evidence from reconciliation interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, highlighting hope and moral elevation as important mediating mechanisms in reducing social distance and promoting acknowledgment.
The afternoon sessions further broadened the workshop’s scope. Giulia Salzano’s (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) paper on empathy questioned simplistic assumptions that empathy automatically bridges divides, instead treating it as a socially conditioned and dynamically reconfigurable disposition. Monika Verbalyte (GESIS) and Donatella Bonansinga (University of Southampton) examined the dual role of political hope in polarization, showing that hope can either reduce or intensify polarization depending on its political object and institutional context. Philipp Wunderlich (International Psychoanalytical University) discussed the German movement “Grandmas against the Right,” analyzing affective practices of dialogue, compassion, demarcation, frustration, and solidarity in encounters with far-right supporters. Mark Higgins (University of Bristol), Michelle Forrest (Bath Spa University), and Jon Somerscales (Pervasive Media) introduced a creative research project using music and sound to explore emotional resonance and human connection in digitally fragmented societies.
The general discussion returned to several guiding questions. Can emotions bridge divides without eliminating disagreement? Are “positive” emotions such as hope, empathy, and compassion always integrative, or can they also reinforce boundaries and exclusion? What institutional, cultural, and relational conditions determine whether emotions bridge or break social ties? The workshop showed that bridging emotions should not be understood as simple solutions to conflict. Rather, they are ambivalent, situated, and relational processes that may make disagreement bearable, coexistence possible, and social boundaries open to reconfiguration.
Overall, the workshop made an important contribution to interdisciplinary emotion research. It connected sociology, political science, psychology, philosophy, peace and conflict studies, and artistic research, while also demonstrating the value of hybrid academic exchange for sustaining global scholarly dialogue.