What do you feel standing at the edge of a vast valley — and what changes if a motorway cuts through it? Most of what we know about emotion was learned in tightly controlled labs. But feelings show their real shape where the stakes and surroundings are real.

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This reserach area follows emotion out into the world: onto the rock face and ski slope, where people regulate under genuine risk and arousal, and above all into nature. We study eco-emotions — awe, gratitude, connectedness, and grief over environmental loss — and ask when they move people to care and act.

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Our E2IATLAS database captures how thousands of nature images make people feel, across more than fifty countries, laying a foundation for taking affective neuroscience outdoors. The guiding question: how do the places we move through, and the risks we choose, actually act on the brain?