With the rise of the ‘science of empathy’ in the wake of the ‘discovery’ of mirror neurons, we have seen a veritable return to biology, ethology, neuroscience, genetics and various evolutionary theories to explain not only human circuits of feeling, but also the emotional politics of contemporary societies internationally. The final chapter of my forthcoming book, Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Palgrave, 2014), grapples with the implications of the multiple layers of translation involved in politicising the science of empathy.

I am particularly interested in what happens in the translation of scholarly scientific research on empathy into the language of popular science.