Media, Emotion and Relationships Education
- Date: Thursday 23 April 2026
- Time: 09:30 – 16:00 GMT (Refreshments and lunch provided)
- Venue: Institute of Advanced Studies, Collaboration Room G05, 54 Pritchatts Rd, G10 on the Campus Map
This interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Advanced Studies will evaluate how various forms of media and creative texts, including narrative artworks such as stories, films, visual art, poetry, theatre, newspapers and social media, might be educational for emotional management and personal relationships. This is urgent work in a contemporary environment where such narratives have a profound and complex impact on audiences’ self-perception, wellbeing, social belonging and interactions. Our activities will produce collaborative insights from researchers across multiple subject areas to explore the use of creative media in educational frameworks, with a focus on friendship and romantic relationships.
The workshop is led by Dr Laura D’Olimpio (Lead), Dr Chiara Brozzo (Co-Lead) and Dr Dorothy Butchard (Co-Lead). Places are limited but if you are interested in joining a follow up event, we’d love to hear from you.
Workshop Materials
In advance of the workshop, we’re inviting all participants to share examples of media on our padlet wall – we’ve circulated the password by email: https://padlet.com/bham/media_emotion
We’re also sharing suggested reading and materials. These are not required reading, but help to give some context for the discussion:
- Laura D’Olimpio. (2022) Heroines and sexy victims: What we learn from female protagonists.
Educating Character Through the Arts, edited by Laura D’Olimpio, et al., Taylor & Francis Group, <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=7087983>.
Created from bham on 2026-03-26 12:10:58. - Chiara Brozzo. (2025). The Shock of the Old: The Epistemic Challenge of Personal Transformation. <https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/09/29/the-shock-of-the-old-the-epistemic-challenge-of-personal-transformation/>
- Kristjánsson Kristján. (2020). Aristotelian character friendship as a ‘Method’ of moral education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39(4), 349-364. <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09717-w>
- Stephanie Lyttle. (2022). Challenging the Love Triangle in Twenty-First-Century Fantastic Young Adult Literature. International Journal of Young Adult Literature, 2022-11, Vol.3 (1), p.1-19 <https://ijyal.ac.uk/articles/10.24877/IJYAL.80>