We are told that social media connects us, helps us to find community and belonging. We are also told that social media is making us more angry, more lonely, more depressed. Come join us for an evening at Grange Pavilion to explore our relationship with social media and the various ways it  shapes our emotions and mental health.

Through discussions and group activities, we'll reflect upon and discuss our thoughts and feelings about digital technology - what effect it has on our lives, its pleasures and its perils, and what we want from our digital worlds.

This workshop brings together international scholars whose research focuses on the digital aspects of human lives, and the ways in which identities, communities, and collectives form through the circulation of affects, information, ideas, and entertainment.

This workshop is funded by the Global Wales Partnership Fund.

From social media fandom to activism, from political actors to hate groups—and to the corporeal selves who inhabit these social locations—what they all have in common are the use of new technologies to create community, disseminate propaganda, and to realise one’s own self.

We welcome the public to join us for a conversation about gender transition and gender critical feminism, TikTok fandom, and white power barbies and far-right tradwives, and the ways in which the digital facilitates social goods and social ills.

In collaboration with the Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health’s Young Persons Advisory Group, Lucy Osler and Alessandra Tanesini design and develop activities for reflecting on how social media platforms shape our experiences of shame, envy, FOMO, belonging, and togetherness.