It’s time to bridge culture gaps by understanding emotions.

Here is a selection of Batja Mesquita's signature talks that are available for different audiences:

• Between Us: How Cultures Shape Emotions (general audiences)

  Becoming aware of cultural differences in emotions is transformative for anyone in intercultural relationships—be they in your neighborhood, class room, board room, court room, or medical examination room. From childhood on, every one of us is trained to have emotions that help us navigate the relationships in our respective cultures. In this talk loaded with research examples and interesting stories, audiences will go on a journey along different cultures, illustrating how different emotional lives can be, how to work and live with these.

• Managing Emotions in a Multicultural Team (business audiences)

  Building an inclusive team –one in which the members of your multicultural team all feel heard and understood – is a challenge that requires more than empathy. It takes culturally-sensitive emotional intelligence. This talk offers concrete cross-cultural understanding of emotions to bring in when approaching trust and leadership, conflict, success and achievement, or gaffs and failures. Participants will leave the session armed with a tool to manage emotions in a multicultural team and to build an emotional culture that makes accommodations to all. This talk gives any company a jumpstart to cultivate its cultural competence in emotions and may be tailored to your specific challenges.

• Emotions in the Intercultural Therapeutic Setting (psychologists and therapists)

  Differences in emotions are not limited to how people express or talk about their emotions, but the very ways in which the world is experienced may differ across cultures, and across different positions within cultures. Variation is the norm, not the exception. And this means that therapist and client are very likely to have, perceive and value different emotional experiences and behavior. This talk illustrates fundamental cultural differences in emotions and provides tools to cultivate an open, culturally sensitive approach to them – a “not knowing” that does justice to the client’s cultural perspective.

• Social Emotional Learning in Culturally Diverse Schools (educators)

  “Emotional literacy” is as important as reading and writing, but its generally much less understood by educators. But just like reading and writing, you can be emotionally literate in different languages. This talk illustrates the vast and meaningful cultural differences in emotions, and provides teachers and educational scientists alike with a framework to cultivate “emotional literacy” in culturally diverse schools. Rather than helping minoritized students ‘overcome deficiencies,’ we will put their experience center-stage, and turn them into resources. We will suggest a toolbox that can guide discovery, and bridge the cultural differences in social and emotional understanding that exist in a class room.