“Hyper-Empathy, Psychopathy, and Society” – Co-Hosted by Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square and Naaz Sidhu!

I received my PhD in English literature from the University of Oxford (UK) in 2017, my dissertation for which explores the prosocial potential of reading, which increases our empathy. After completing my PhD, I worked as a Special Programs & Student Records Assistant at the U of Winnipeg and later as a Research Grants Officer (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) for the Office of Research Services at the U of Manitoba (UM). I then worked as Postdoctoral Fellow (UM) under the supervision of Dr. Faubert and as a Research Affiliate with UM’s Institute for the Humanities. I have also worked as an Instructor in the Department of English and as an Interdisciplinary Instructor in the Faculty of Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU). I have had articles on imagination, literature, empathy, mental health, emotional contagion, and social change published in Essays in Romanticism (2020) and Studies in the Literary Imagination (2018), and my chapter for The Routledge Handbook of Health and Media, “Climate Health Is Human Health: Working Through Eco-Anxiety with the Written Word in Print and Digital Media,” co-authored with Dr. Carol-Ann Farkas (MCPHS University), will be published in early 2022. My latest project, “Books, Brains, and Benevolence: An Interdisciplinary Study of Empathy,” advocates for a radical shift from a self-focused to an other-focused society and for a renewed awareness of how intimately connected we are to one another and to our environment. I am currently a Research Affiliate with The University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities - which promotes cross-disciplinary research in the Humanities - a member of the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium, and an Independent Contractor with the non-profit charity organization Emergence Benefactors, which supports the science of emergence. I am the lead organizer of the interdisciplinary global forum “Redesigning Our World,” which will take place in April 2022 and enable people to come together to think collectively about the fate of our shared planet. I also co-host The Brains & Banter Podcast with an awesome group of students, academics, artists, and activists. We offer a multiplicity of perspectives on topics like the climate crisis, mental health, systemic racism, social justice, criminal justice, prison reform, higher education, spirituality, storytelling, consciousness, metaphor, music, comedy, art, activism, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and more. View all posts by Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square