Over 300 people attended ‘Stoicism Today’, a public conference funded and organized by the Centre. The event is part of Stoic Week – a week of public activities exploring how people can use Stoicism today.

Speakers included Professor Chris Gill of Exeter University, Professor Angie Hobbs of Sheffield University, Dr John Sellars of Kings College London, Nikki Cameron of HMP Low Moss, and Jules Evans, policy director of the Centre, who organized the event.

Stoicism Today is a three-year-old project researching how people use Stoic philosophy in modern life, and how it inspired Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Stoic Week is an online course which people can follow around the world – 2500 people took part this year.

The project has received coverage in publications including the Today programme on Radio 4, Newsweek, the Guardian, the Spectator, Forbes, ABC Australia and the New York Times.

You can watch videos from the event here.

Clare Whistler’s artist-in-residency, which was a collaboration linked to Thomas Dixon’s work on the history of weeping, investigated the emotional history of water – ‘Weather, Tears, and Waterways’. The residency is documented in a series of blog posts explaining the thinking and outcomes leading up to the ‘Vessels of Tears’ event in May 2014, including a post by PhD candidate Hetta Howes writing about the emotional meanings of water for women in the middle ages. We also worked with audio producer Natalie Steed to make three podcasts recording various aspects of the project, including an original composition by Kerry Andrew.

As the nights drew in, during November, we continued our more melancholy train of thought with a podcast produced by Natalie Steed to mark the 30th anniversary of ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’. This podcast was a collaboration with our QMUL colleagues in the History of Modern Biomedicine Research group, headed by Professor Tilli Tansey, and arose from a joint witness seminar.

Earlier in the year Jules Evans had interviewed Norman E. Rosenthal, who wrote the first paper naming ‘SAD’ in 1984, for this blog. The transcript of the SAD Witness Seminar is now published and available to read in full.