Students in higher education experience a range of academic emotions, from enjoyment or boredom in learning, to fear of failure or optimism about high stakes assessments. While there is general consensus regarding the importance of academic emotions, reflected in the increased emphasis on social and emotional learning, and advocacy for the inclusion of learning experiences that foster relevant competences -- there remains the need to further understand the role of academic emotions in higher education. This paper explores the role of emotion in a university-based global citizenship education (GCE) intervention. Focus groups were conducted with 36 pre-service teachers across six teacher education programmes that explored participants' understandings and experiences of GCE. Findings suggest marginally more naturally-occurring mentions of negative emotions and affect states compared to positive, with more of these relating to students' responses to epistemic awareness of humanitarian issues, than to pedagogy. Some implications for practice are considered.