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This open access volume is an interdisciplinary anthology on loneliness that brings together for the first time a variety of disciplines to provide a comprehensive overview of research into a defining condition of our age.

Loneliness is currently a widely debated topic in intellectual and public discourse that is occasionally, though controversially, seen to be an important public health hazard and that is often, and also controversially, said to be a marker of our digital and post-pandemic age. The volume brings together the contributions from leading researchers in philosophy, literature, psychology, cognitive science, history, anthropology, health science and business studies. Despite the wide scope of topics and differences in methodology, the contributors all investigate, in various forms, conceptual and empirical questions as they arise in the attempt to understand what loneliness is and whether we should think of it as the signifier of our time. The collection brings together chapters that investigate loneliness from a conceptual standpoint such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, or literature. They prepare the ground for a second section in which loneliness is investigated as it manifests itself in old age and at the end of life, as posing crucial problems for contemporary society. The contributions to the third section then research concrete manifestations of loneliness, such as loneliness amongst asylum seekers, in the workplace, and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Together these chapters offer a unique portrait of loneliness in our time that presents this hotly debated phenomenon in a multi-faceted, novel, and nuanced way.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Exeter, Maynooth University, UCLA and Bentley University.