Alba Montes Sánchez

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• CV
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As a postdoc at the Center for Subjectivity Research I am affiliated with the project Antagonistic Political Emotions. In this framework, I am primarily investigating the transformations that impact the sense of belonging of migrants and expats upon relocation, including some potentially confrontational negotiations with the host society on what it means to belong or to be an outsider. My line of research seeks to shed light on the sense of belonging (what it means to feel one belongs or doesn’t belong) by focusing on several key emotions that bear upon it. On the one hand, I look at nostalgia and hope as two phenomena that structure one’s relations to one’s past and future, thus articulating one’s sense of identity over time. On the other hand, I pay attention to a class of emotions that bind one’s sense of self with other people’s way of treating and relating to us: the so-called self-conscious emotions, such as pride, shame and envy. In these emotions, we often evaluate ourselves based on how we fare in our relations with our social environment. By looking at all these emotions, I seek to shed light on the temporal and social dimensions of belonging.

More generally, my research focuses on the philosophy and moral psychology of emotions, at the intersection of philosophy of mind and phenomenology. In the past I’ve worked extensively on the moral significance of shame at the individual level, and I’ve done research on the intersection between human self-consciousness and sociality by focusing on the social dimensions of self-conscious emotions, such as shame, envy, pride, embarrassment, and so on. On the whole, I am interested in understanding how emotions contribute to making us who we are as individuals and groups, as well as the crucial roles they play in informing our moral and political thinking and action.

Primary fields of research

Philosophy of Mind, Phenomenology, Selfhood, Intersubjectivity, Sociality and Group Membership, Narrative Identity, Moral Psychology and Phenomenology, Emotion (especially self-conscious and moral emotions), Ethics and Emotion, Shame, Nostalgia, Belonging

Teaching

At the moment I do not teach any courses, but I am avilable to supervise MA or BA theses on topics related to my research and I welcome expressions of interest in this regard.

Selected publications

1. Published

   Pride, Shame and Group Identification

   Salice, A. & Montes Sánchez, Alba, 2016, In: Frontiers in Psychology. 7, 557

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

2. Published

   Shame and the Internalized Other

   Montes Sánchez, Alba, 2015, In: Etica e Politica / Ethics and Politics. XVII, 1, p. 181-200 20 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

3. Published

   Shame, recognition and love in Shakespeare’s 'King Lear'

   Montes Sánchez, Alba, 2014, In: Azafea: Revista de Filosofía. 16, p. 73-93 21 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

4. Published

   Self-Consciousness, Caring, Relationality: An Investigation into the Experience of Shame and its Ethical Role

   Montes Sánchez, Alba, 18 Sep 2014, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. 176 p.

   Research output: Book/Report › Ph.D. thesis › Research

Selected activities

1. CFS Workshop: Genomics, History and Identities

   Montes Sánchez, Alba (Organizer)

   21 Jan 2016 → 22 Jan 2016

   Activity: Participating in an event - types › Organisation of and participation in conference

2. The Fourth Conference of the European Network on Social Ontology (ENSO IV)

   Montes Sánchez, Alba (Speaker)

   24 Sep 2015

   Activity: Participating in an event - types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course

3. 2nd Annual Conference of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions

   Montes Sánchez, Alba (Speaker)

   17 Jul 2015

   Activity: Participating in an event - types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course

4. Conference of the International Society for Research on Emotion

   Montes Sánchez, Alba (Speaker)

   8 Jul 2015

   Activity: Participating in an event - types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course