The Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions uses historical knowledge from medieval and early modern Europe to understand how societies have understood, experienced, expressed and performed emotions in pre-modern Europe, and how this long history impacts on contemporary Australia.
The Centre has four programs: Meanings, Change, Performance, and Shaping the Modern.
The Centre also has formal links with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (USA) and the University of York (England).
CHE hosted over 50 international academic visitors on short-term fellowship schemes, and attracted (and continues to attract) many more to its conferences and collaboratories each year, from postgraduates to professors, and the CHE collaborated on major international events in Germany, Italy, UK, China, South Africa, America and Canada.
The Centre was awarded A$24 million in Australian Government funding for the period 2011 to 2018,[2] at the time the largest funding award to the humanities in Australian history.