This year the central topic of the summer school organized by the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (SCAS) is “Emotion, fiction, and virtual worlds”.

A growing body of research is highlighting the potential power of new technologies such as virtual reality, robotics, videogames or human-computer interaction for health and learning purposes. Much of the current research, however, fails to bridge the gap between technology, virtual worlds and fundamental theoretical or empirical constructs such as emotions, immersion and reality, user engagement and related motivational aspects, as well as social interactions. ISSAS 2016 will address those gaps by discussing the role of emotions in fictional (e.g. novels) and virtual worlds (such as virtual reality worlds or videogames).

The scientific program for 2016 comprises plenary lectures from leading scholars in the field, discussions sessions and workshops aimed at theoretical integration and fostering new research ideas, group work in which the students design an interdisciplinary research project that will be presented and discussed on the last day.

The Open University’s Derek Matravers is one of these leading scholars. For more details, follow this link.