About ISSAS

International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS)

Emotions and Sustainability

30 June – 7 July, 2026

Chateau de Bossey, Switzerland

The International Summer School in Affective Science (ISSAS) is one of the core education activities organized by the Education & Training program of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA). This interdisciplinary school is organized around a topic of common interest to the various disciplines involved in the affective sciences. Past editions have been devoted to emotional intelligence, emotions and well-being, the development of emotion, emotion elicitation, emotion communication, emotion and action, emotion regulation, emotion and morality, aesthetic emotions, and emotions in fictions and virtual worlds. Our next edition will focus on another important transversal topic: emotions and sustainability.

The school presents a very exciting opportunity to address research on affective sustainability in a highly interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary manner, with plenary lectures by internationally renowned scholars from psychology, philosophy, communication sciences, political science, and innovation studies. In addition, the summer school will leverage the strong existing collaboration between the CISA and the UN Geneva. A number of workshops will be organized jointly with the UN Beyond Lab to explore how insights from the affective sciences can be implemented in concrete sustainability problems, and we will have the opportunity to visit the UN premises in Geneva.

An important part of the week will be dedicated to interdisciplinary group work where students will be encouraged to use their own knowledge and the resources of the summer school to design a novel project to advance the themes covered at ISSAS. The projects will be presented at the end of the school in competition for the ISSAS prize. A social program will also be offered to make the summer school not only intellectually enriching, but also an excellent opportunity to make new contacts and friends.