IGEL 2025 conference schedule (June 5 & 6, 2025)

[guansoon (Guan Soon Khoo)]

Conference sponsors:

Conference Location (for in-person attendance):

• The Thompson Conference Center (TCC) on the campus of UT Austin https://thompsoncenter.utexas.edu/
  Organizers tip: In your Map app, type in Lot 40 (it’s the parking lot for the TCC).
  https://maps.app.goo.gl/8txZwWmCbhmTGYQQ9

Day 0 - Wed 4 June, 2025 (Evening In-Person only)

Meet at Moxy University Hotel Back Courtyard

2025-06-04T23:00:00Z→2025-06-05T02:30:00Z

• Informal meet & mingle with conference attendees

• Registration and “soft open”

Day 1 - Thu 5 June, 2025

Opening Ceremony

[ Launch Meeting - Zoom ]

2025-06-05T13:00:00Z→2025-06-05T13:30:00Z
Room 1.124

• Opening Remarks by IGEL Vice President and Organizer of the Conference Guan Soon Khoo @guansoon

Parallel Session 1

2025-06-05T13:30:00Z→2025-06-05T15:00:00Z

1A. Panel Session: Wellbeing and Adolescents
Cristina Loi @CristinaLoi Room 1.126 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 1A.1 Si Jia Wu Enjoyment of manga stories predicts psychosocial well-being in teenagers

• 1A.2 Cristina Loi The impact of a narrative-based intervention for young adults on well-being, climate emotions and pro environmental behaviors

• 1A.3 Tina Ternes The Effects of Shared Reading on Young Adults’ Well-Being and Reading Habits

• 1A.4 Lilla Magyari Perceived realism of fictional dialogues and every-day conversations

1B. Symposium: The Impact of Narratives in Medical Education: Exploring their Role in Empathy Training, Moral Residue, and End-of-life Care Situations
Nikoletta Alexandri @NikolettaAlexandri Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 1B.1 Tracy Moniz Narrative matters: Exploring end-of-life care through the writings of physicians, patients, and caregivers

• 1B.2 Nikoletta Alexandri How narrative engagement influences perceived susceptibility to moral residue and the role of fictionality

• 1B.3 Olivia Fialho Moral Residue Reading Experiences Among Healthcare Professionals: A Computational Cognitive Poetics Analysis

• 1B.4 Anja Rydén Gramner Constructions of empathy as a professional skill in medical education fiction seminars

Coffee Break

2025-06-05T15:00:00Z→2025-06-05T15:15:00Z

Parallel Session 2

2025-06-05T15:15:00Z→2025-06-05T16:45:00Z

2A. Panel Session: Prosocial and Therapeutic Effects of Narratives
Giulia Scapin @Giulia_Scapin Room 1.126 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 2A.1 Ailise Bulfin & Victoria Pöhls 'A welcome experience of an “under-the-carpet” subject’: Investigating audience responses to fictional representations of child sexual abuse – Georgia Rule case study

• 2A.2 Velna Roncevic The therapeutic effects of literature: personal reflection of readers

• 2A.3 Krystyna Wieszczek Empowerment: Conceptual and Methodological Explorations of the Effects of Reading

• 2A.4 Stephanie Preston Improving Empathy through Narrative: A Neuropsychology Approach

2B. Symposium: Reinventing Narrative - Studies with XR
Gabriele Salciute Civiliene @GabrieleSC Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 2B.1 Stephanie Janes Empathy and Affective Brand Narratives in Immersive Promotional Media

• 2B.2 Hedren Sum Virtual Mountain Estate

• 2B.3 Gabriele Salciute Civiliene VR Ethnography of Sound in William Faulkner across Languages

Lunch Break & Poster Session ( Lobby)

2025-06-05T16:45:00Z→2025-06-05T18:00:00Z (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

1. Emily D’Antonio Sex Education of Our Own: A Content Analysis of Erotic Fanfiction

2. Merel van Goch Once upon a time in academia: how shared reading of campus novels fosters PhD candidates’ wellbeing

3. Guan Soon Khoo Avoiders, reappraisers, or meaning-seekers?: Exploring viewer traits that could heighten tragic insight and self-awareness

4. Tine Riis Andersen Igniting reading interest in 5th grade students through Shared Reading

5. Alice Gibson ‘Works of Genius’: a Tool for Nurturing an Optimistic Will?

6. Nuo Liu Mapping the Moral Mind: Developing an Empirical Typology of Moral Residue Reading Experiences through Lexical Basis for Numerically Aided Phenomenology (Lex-Nap)

** Please Vote for BEST POSTER: Scan the QR code **

De Gruyter keynote 1

[ Launch Meeting - Zoom ]

2025-06-05T18:00:00Z→2025-06-05T19:00:00Z
Michael Slater (Ohio State University)
Title: “Human need, motivation, and goals-based perspectives on narrative processing and effects: EELM, TEBOTS, Mediated Wisdom of Experience, and EELM Revisited”
Room 1.124
Guan Soon Khoo @guansoon

Coffee Break

2025-06-05T19:00:00Z→2025-06-05T19:15:00Z

Parallel Session 3

2025-06-05T19:15:00Z→2025-06-05T20:15:00Z

3A. Panel Session: Finding and Making Meaning in Different Cultural, Social and Historical Contexts
Ze Yu @Ze_Yu Room 1.126 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 3A.1 Brook Miller Narrativity and Reading Narratives

• 3A.2 Michael Henderson Aesthetics of Solidarity/Aesthetics as Solidarity

• 3A.3 Ze Yu Emotions Across Pages: A Comparative Study of Reader Response to Web Novels in Chinese and English on Qidian and WebNovel

3B. Symposium: Narratives of Connection: The Transformative Power of Creative Writing on the Mind and Society
Marina De Seta @marina.deseta Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 3B.1 Marina De Seta Writing to Empathize: How Creative Writing Can Boost Empathy

• 3B.2 Paul Sopcak Creative Writing as a Community-Creating Act?

• 3B.3 David Hanauer The Psychological Outcomes of Writing a Poetic Autoethnography

Coffee Break

2025-06-05T20:15:00Z→2025-06-05T20:30:00Z

IGEL General Assembly (Agenda below)

[Launch Meeting - Zoom]

2025-06-05T20:30:00Z→2025-06-05T22:00:00Z
Room 1.124

• Welcome

  • OUTSTANDING STUDENT PAPER AWARD!

• Secretary report

  • Introduction of Board members

• Financial report

• Vice president report: IGEL 2025

• SSOL report

• Online presence report

• Training school report

• Next conference

  • Looking for 2027 conference bids

Conference Dinner (in person only)

2025-06-05T23:30:00Z→2025-06-06T02:00:00Z
Chapulin Cantina, South Congress (SoCo), South Austin

• Organizers tip: Chapulin has a good happy hour until 6 pm if you want a treat from the heat [Happy Hour — Chapulin Cantina]

Day 2 - Fri 6 June, 2025

Parallel Session 4

2025-06-06T13:30:00Z→2025-06-06T15:00:00Z

4A. Panel Session: New Perspectives in the Assessment of Reading Experiences
Tine Riis Andersen @tineriis Room 1.126 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 4A.1 Emilie Sitter How creative is literariness? Towards a theoretical-empirical framework for assessing linguistic creativity in fiction

• 4A.2 MaryGabrielle Prezioso Children’s Story World Absorption

4B. Symposium: Foregrounding I: Reflections and New Developments
Giulia Scapin @Giulia_Scapin and Mesian Tilmatine @mtilmatine Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 4B.1 Willie van Peer The Economics of Foregrounding

• 4B.2 Don Kuiken Letting go of the Global Foregrounding-Defamiliarization Model

• 4B.3 Paul Sopcak Foregrounding and Mündigkeit

Coffee Break

2025-06-06T15:00:00Z→2025-06-06T15:15:00Z

Parallel Session 5

2025-06-06T15:15:00Z→2025-06-06T16:45:00Z

5A. Panel Session: Entertainment Psychology and the Eudaimonic Framework
Tina Ternes @TinaT Room 1.126 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 5A.1 Alysse Baker Parasocial Compensation or Enrichment? Investigating the Relationship Between Age, Loneliness, Parasocial Relationships and Eudaimonic Motivations Through The Lens of Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

• 5A.2 Kaitlin Fitzgerald Testing Narrative Tone and Context in Self-Transcendent Media

• 5A.3 Danny Yihan Jia Effect of Narrative Outcomes on Viewer Engagement After Exposure: A Longitudinal Study

• 5A.4 Judy Watts This Really Happened: Investigating Emotional Responses to Nonfictional Eudaimonic Narratives of Opioid Use Disorder

5B. Symposium: Foregrounding II: Issues of Measurement
Giulia Scapin @Giulia_Scapin and Mesian Tilmatine @mtilmatine Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• 5B.1 Carmen Bonasera Can Emotional Atmospheres elicit Empathy? Measuring Reader Responses to Foregrounded Pathetic Fallacy and its Converse

• 5B.2 Giulia Scapin The U-Shaped Path to Empathy - And refining the assessment of foregrounding along the way

• 5B.3 Mesian Tilmatine How to understand Humans: Can foregrounding be calculated?

Lunch Break

2025-06-06T16:45:00Z→2025-06-06T18:00:00Z

De Gruyter keynote 2 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

2025-06-06T18:00:00Z→2025-06-06T19:00:00Z
Shay Yao (Georgia State University)
Title: “Fictional Foes, Real Connections: How Non-Human Narrative Enemies Promote Intergroup Inclusion”
Room 1.124
Guan Soon Khoo @guansoon

Coffee Break

2025-06-06T19:00:00Z→2025-06-06T19:15:00Z

Meet up with the Keynote Speakers

2025-06-06T19:15:00Z→2025-06-06T20:15:00Z
Room 1.126 Launch Meeting - Zoom

• Event open to everyone, but especially for early career researchers and graduate students

Coffee Break

2025-06-06T20:15:00Z→2025-06-06T20:30:00Z

Closing Event

2025-06-06T20:30:00Z→2025-06-06T21:30:00Z
Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

Healing in Motion: An Arts-Based Research Process using Dance, Poetry and Prayer to Contend with Cancer

• Film screening with creator introduction, David Hanauer, with discussion
• Guan Soon Khoo (moderator; discuss post-traumatic growth research)
• Paul Sopcak (respondent 1)
• Tine Riis Andersen (respondent 2)

Closing Ceremony

2025-06-06T21:30:00Z→2025-06-06T22:00:00Z
Room 1.124 (Launch Meeting - Zoom)

• Closing Remarks by IGEL VP Guan Soon Khoo

• BEST POSTER AWARD will be announced!