We are pleased to invite you to participate in the Open Scientific Session on Biographical Perspectives of Anxiety and Coping on Monday, 27 October 2025, from 10:00 to 15:30 CEST. The session is particularly addressed to researchers and students interested in the topics of anxiety and coping strategies, biographical research, and the societies of Central and Eastern Europe.
The session is fully hybrid. It will take place at the Faculty of Sociology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Szamarzewskiego 89, 60-568 Poznań, Poland) in Room 107 of Building D, and online. To participate online, please register at: https://forms.office.com/e/48xbwV7kzh
Contemporary risks—such as climate change, weather anomalies, and the scarcity of potable water—are closely tied to technological progress and environmental degradation. Such risks may be perceived as uncontrollable, thereby heightening individual anxieties. The prevalence and significance of environmental anxieties vary across countries and throughout individuals’ life courses. Their perception can change when assessed relative to other problems (Carmi & Bartal 2014); accordingly, previous research recommends that “public concern for the environment should be measured relative to concern over other problems” (Dunlap 1989). The proliferation of anxieties is linked to vulnerability, assumed to be a defining feature of the human condition (Furedi 2019), and therefore calls for coping strategies that enable individuals to manage their anxieties—for example, through emotion regulation, problem solving, or by changing the meaning of anxieties (Lazarus & Folkman 1991). Nevertheless, international studies on environmental anxieties and coping strategies remain scarce; yet such research could provide policy-makers with valuable knowledge. It is essential to broaden the geographical scope beyond the heavily studied Western settings; Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, for example, represent contexts that are still under-examined and highly relevant.
This session focuses on the biographical research conducted within the project ANSWER – ANxieties and Social coping strategies Within the last 50 years in the context of Natural EnviRonment: A Comparative Case Study of Poland, Ukraine, and Hungary (no. UMO-2021/43/D/HS6/01702). Project ANSWER is financed by National Science Centre and conducted in the Department of Social Problems Research and Social Work, at the Faculty of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland).
Contact: Krzysztof Mączka, krzysztof.maczka@amu.edu.pl
