BrIAS Thursday Seminars: BIFD Alice Poma + BIFD Nana Akua Anyidoho
The role of emotions in building sustainable societies
by Alice Poma
Addressing the climate and socio-environmental crisis requires not only regulatory and structural reforms, but also a profound cultural transformation capable of rethinking humanity’s place on the planet. Decarbonising the economy may help mitigate the effects of climate change, but it does not address climate injustice and may even exacerbate it through mechanisms such as carbon markets and large-scale renewable energy projects promoted by corporations. A way to achieve a cultural change is challenging the capitalist emotional culture, which promotes indifference towards socio-environmental and climate crises, loyalty and trust in corporations, and resignation to the belief that no alternatives to their system exist. In contrast, activism can promote and enact an alternative emotional culture, in which emotions and feeling rules associated with a desired future are reclaimed — what may be described as a prefigurative emotional culture (Poma, 2026). In this talk I will present how the construction of a sustainable emotional culture could be a first step for building sustainable societies, and how this can help prevent resignation.
Bio
Alice Poma is a full-time researcher at the Institute of Social Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (Spanish: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM). Poma carries out research in Emotions and Social Movements, currently around the emotional response to climate change in activists and non-activists.
Her work on the emotional dimension of activism has focused on understanding the impact of emotions at various stages of mobilization and on social and cultural change. Her latest book, “Llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones: Una guía para construir una cultura emocional prefigurativa” (We Carry a New World in Our Hearts: A Guide to Building a Prefigurative Emotional Culture) (UNAM, 2026), demonstrates how emotions—as sociocultural constructs—are central to building the counter-hegemonic culture needed to create another world.
Title TBC
by Nana Akua Anyidoho
Bio
Nana Akua Anyidoho is a researcher in social policy and social development at the University of Ghana. She is interested in the ways in which marginalized social groups (in particular, young people and women) navigate unfavourable policy structures in their struggles for social and economic rights. Her research focuses on higher education policy, youth and women’s employment, with emphasis on themes of agency, participation and inclusion.