Valérie de Courville Nicol

Professor, Sociology and Anthropology

Valérie is a sociologist who examines the social processes by which collective fears and desires come into being, with a focus on processes of emotional socialization, forms of emotion management, popular forms of literature on moral and emotional danger, and psychological and other therapeutic discourses and practices pertaining to emotional health. She is interested in what is socially construed as emotional risk, in how emotional risk is collectively experienced, in what affective signs are attached to emotional risk, and in how emotional risk orients individual and collective action through its association with particular capacities and solutions.