Paper details

Paper authors	Jenny Peterson
In panel on	Navigating Empathy in Humanitarian Education
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

As we increasingly attempt to bring empathy into humanitarian education, the nature of our labour (both as instructors and students) shifts substantially. On top of the 'traditional' modes of scholarly work in which we engage, an empathic approach brings an additional though necessary form of emotional labour to our work. This paper will provide an overview of the research on emotional labour within classroom settings, exploring what we know in terms of its modalities and impacts. This review will be supplemented by the author's auto-ethnographic account of mentoring students through research projects that became highly personalized and at times incredibly emotionally difficult. Importantly, the paper will discuss the workload implications (for both instructors and students) that come with increased emotional labour, and will also identifying some of the ways in which emotional labour, if not recognized, can also have negative, even if unintended consequences. However, recognizing the importance and value of emotional labour, the paper will in turn examine how to address some of these dangers and will argue that when emotional labour is navigated effectively it can contribute to transformative moments of empathetic learning and scholarship driven by an ethics of care and solidarity towards marginalized communities.

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