We are an international network of researchers from a variety of disciplines including literary and film studies, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, and geography. Some of us are based in the UK, many others in other European countries, and others around the world. In our research, we look at experiences and representations of love. There is no limit to the scope of our work regarding the types of love studied such as parental love, romantic love, neighbourly love, friendship etc. There is also no hierarchy implied which would favour ‘committed’ relationships over casual ones or familial relationships over friendships.
Some members of the network focus their research on experiences and representations of love in the present, more or less loosely defined as the 21st century. This focus does not imply that somehow at midnight of the first of January 2000 a paradigm shift had occurred. Love is durable and it is flexible. It is shaped and reshaped by physiological and psychological constants, by the extremely longue durée of evolutionary processes, by centuries of love doctrines, and by profound changes in society that have occurred in the last century and decades. While many people tend to believe in eternal values of love and even eternal love, our experiences often feel new, unprecedented and challenging. This is why our network is also open to researchers who work on periods of the past or on (anthropological) constants of the human and trans-human experience.