As part of Dr. Van Cappellen's project, she and her team hosted an interdisciplinary meeting on the study of hope from November 9th-11th, 2025. This meeting was funded thanks to the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation (Grant #62676).
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The meeting brought 14 hope researchers from 8 U.S. states, Canada, the U.K., and Europe to Duke. Researchers came from backgrounds in clinical psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, counseling psychology, health psychology, educational psychology, religious studies, philosophy, and business and economics. The motivation behind inviting a breadth of perspectives was to foster interdisciplinary communication and open up the possibility for future collaboration. For three days, participants contributed thoughts on the project team's working model of hope as an emotion, shared insights and findings from their own work, and brainstormed future directions for research.
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The main products of this meeting were (1) a more comprehensive understanding of how the research team can continue to expand and refine their framework of hope, (2) new connections with scholars across a wide range of disciplines, (3) ideas for how the team can apply current findings via hope intervention strategies, and (4) a repository of reflections and relevant materials to our discussions from those in attendance.

Attendees

Agenda

Sunday, November 9th, 2025

Meeting participants introduced themselves.

In their opening presentation, Drs. Patty Van Cappellen and Megan Edwards covered the current state of hope research and provided an overview on the work the research team has done thus far and what we hope to do in the future.

Monday, November 10th, 2025

Session 1: Introductions and What is Hope to You?

Those in attendance provided an introduction to their scholarship on hope and reflected on the question "What is hope to you?"

Session 2: Appraisals of Hope

Appraisal patterns of hope were discussed. Participants provided their thoughts on the necessary and sufficient ingredients for hope and offered critiques of the research team's model of the appraisal pattern of hope.

Session 3: A Larger Model of Hope

Drs. Van Cappellen and Edwards reviewed the research team's larger model of the emotion of hope and participants mind mapped models of hope based on their own scholarship and personal understandings of hope.

Tuesday, November 11th, 2025

Session 4: Sources of Hope

Dr. Edwards discussed her research on hope inductions. Participants discussed the mechanisms of hope, what a hope intervention could look like, and how to bridge the gap between experimental designs and real-world practices for inducing hope.

Session 5: Hope - A Theory of Change and Open Empirical Questions

Taking into account the discussions held throughout the meeting, participants reflected on a list of open empirical questions the research team hopes to see answered moving forward as the research landscape on hope continues to expand.

A Thank You to Our Supporters

The research team extends its thanks to all of the people and organizations that made this meeting possible:

The John Templeton Foundation (JTF)

Duke University Social Science Research Institute (SSRI)

Duke University Bass Connections