'Can the European Union Feel? When Political Psychology Encounters Foreign Policy' is the title of a public lecture held recently at the European Documentation Centre.
The public lecture delivered by Professor Michelle Pace was hosted by the Institute for European Studies, University of Malta. The focus of the lecture was the impact of emotions on the European Union (EU) as an international agency.
Professor Pace discussed the results of recent research she conducted. Emotions are understood as performances through which an individual or collective actor can expresses itself to others while constructing its identity, creating its agency, and potentially affecting the social order.
Professor Pace focused on the impact in relation to the EU’s engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has many underlying emotions linked with past traumatic experiences. Her aim was to instigate a discussion between the emotions literature in International Relations and the European Union studies literature to nuance understanding of the politics of emotions that increasingly constrain what kind of a global actor the EU actually is or can become.
Prof. Michelle Pace, a Professor at Roskilde University in Denmark, has collaborated with the Institute for European Studies in the recent past.