{"id":2217,"date":"2019-04-03T18:26:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T17:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/?p=2217"},"modified":"2019-05-22T13:50:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:50:17","slug":"call-for-papers-pro-social-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/2019\/04\/03\/call-for-papers-pro-social-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for papers: ‘Pro-Social Play’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Nicola Shaughnessey<\/a>, Professor of Performance in the Department of Drama and Theatre<\/a> and Dr Dieter Declercq<\/a>, Assistant Lecturer in Film<\/a> and Media Studies<\/a>, along with Dr Chiao-I Tseng<\/a> from the University of Bremen<\/a>, are organising an international conference entitled ‘Pro-Social Play! Storytelling and Well-being across Media Borders’. The conference will be hosted by the School of Arts<\/a> from Thursday 17 October to Saturday 19 October 2019.<\/p>\n

Plenary speakers include\u00a0Charles Forceville<\/a> (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam);\u00a0Tobias Greitemeyer<\/a>, Social Psychology (University of Innsbruck;\u00a0Anja Lauk\u00f6tter<\/a>, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin); and\u00a0Harry Yi-Jui Wu<\/a>, (Medical Ethics and Humanities, Hong Kong University).<\/p>\n

The conference will also include a screening of\u00a0Dark River<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(2017), followed by a round table discussion with\u00a0Clio Barnard<\/a>, the award-winning director and Reader in Film<\/a> in the School of Arts, as well as workshops by artists at the arts charity People United on prosocial performances.<\/p>\n

This truly interdisciplinary and international conference brings together scholars of\u00a0 empirical and theoretical research as well as practitioners working on narrative arts for promoting pro-social behaviours and mental well-being across different media. To date, the pro-social narratives have often been studied with a focus on testing people’s media exposure and pro-social effects. Nevertheless, as explicitly pointed out by most of these studies, we also need to investigate how the narrative factors are designed, structured and mobilised in a specific coherent way to effectively achieve the intended prosocial and mental health purposes. Hence, it is crucial to advance the theoretical link between the\u00a0design choice<\/em>\u00a0of narrative, media technological features for engaging people in difficult topics and their pro-social response. Establishing the link is precisely the main objective of this conference. This includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:<\/p>\n