Agnes Arnold-Forster

Nostalgia: A Dangerous Emotion

Did you know that ‘nostalgia’ was first identified in the seventeenth century as an illness that could kill you?

Fast forward to today and it’s a weapon co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians to sell us goods and policies.

Blending neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine, Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster explores nostalgia as a social and political emotion, simultaneously comforting and yet open to misuse, used to feed our anxieties and dissatisfactions and shape our hopes for the future.