Meet our Scholars

My PhD research at the University of Aberdeen focused on analysing Real Life magazines through a psychosocial lens, drawing on my extensive experience as a journalist working on national newspapers and Real Life magazines. My research highlights the neoliberal agenda embedded in the production and consumption of Real Life magazines, examining their emotional and psychosocial impact on readers and the broader media environment. With my particular interest in socio-economic and political loss, I apply a psychosocial lens to to explore the psychical implications of loss and how it becomes inscribed in a particularly classed and gendered form of melancholia. Since completing my PhD, I was a Independent Social Research Fellowship (ISRF), Independent Scolar Fellow 2023 with my project " Re-imagining the Real Life magazine, teenage girls and melancholic communities," working with socially deprived female teenagers from Aberdeen to create a real life magazine. I also work at Aberdeen cultural organisation Station House Media Unit (shmu), contributing to their work empowering people from lower socio economic backgrounds to take space in the media, make their voices heard and share their experiences authentically – work that helps challenge dominant conceptions of class and gender. I am on the Executive Board of the Association of Psychosocial Studies (APS), the Chair of APS ECR/PhD Reading Group, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies and a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

I am a historian of subjectivity who uses psychoanalytic theory in my research and writing. Most recently my work has focused on the history of solitude from the late 17th century to the present.

Michael Uebel has taught literature and theory at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and the University of Kentucky. He has also taught at the University of Texas at Austin in the School of Social Work where he was appointed Lecturer, and is currently Affiliate of the Office for the Associate Dean for Research. He has been a candidate and instructor at the Austin Center for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and he maintains a private practice in Austin. Uebel was Fellow at the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute (now The Center for Psychoanalytic Studies) in 2006-7. He is the author of over 45 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on cultural and intellectual history and on mental health practice. Author and editor of several books, including Race and the Subject of Masculinities (Duke University Press) and Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (Palgrave), he is currently working on Masochism in America, examining the formation of moral and social consciousness in the post-war period. His recent book entitled The Seeds of Equanimity: Knowing and Being (Mimesis International Press, 2025) describes the concept of equanimity from Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives.

Angie Voela is a Reader in Social Sciences, University of East London (UK). She is the co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society since 2018. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on gender and feminism; psychoanalysis and philosophy; psychoanalytic approaches to politics, pedagogy and space; and psychoanalysis and contemporary culture. She is the author of After Oedipus: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Myth in Contemporary Culture (2017). Her more recent publications include the co-edited volumes After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial transformations after COVID-19 (2021) and Movement, Velocity and Rhythm from a Psychoanalytic Perspective (2022) and a co-edited special issue on Psychoanalysis and Academic Freedom (Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 2025). She is training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the SITE of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

I am a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice and also a novelist under the pen name of William Rose. As well as my work with patients in psychotherapy I have carried out a considerable amount of teaching and supervision for psychotherapy trainings. For ten years I was Chairman of the Trustees of The Squiggle Foundation, the organisation formed to study and disseminate the work of Donald Winnicott. I have also independently lectured on psychoanalytic topics and on aspects of fine art history, particularly the artistic and literary movement known as Symbolism. This I have seen as a cultural element that was contemporaneous to Freud’s earliest development of psychoanalysis. I have always had a special interest in this period in which there was a growing exploration and understanding of the unconscious. My first novel, originally published by Karnac and then republished by Sphinx Books, ‘The Strange Case of Madeleine Seguin’, was largely situated in the Salpêtrière hospital of Jean-Martin Charcot and set at a time close to that in which Freud was studying there under Charcot. The study of Hysteria and the use of hypnotism were prominent at this time and these were most relevant to the themes in the novel. I have always had a special interest in this period. My second novel, ‘Camille and the Raising of Eros’ also made much use of psychoanalytic theory and history, with Princess Marie Bonaparte, who played such an important part in Freud’s life, as a principal character. I continue with my psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice, and to write and lecture. In my lectures I take items of psychoanalytic interest and attempt to enrich the subject matter with the use of images from fine art.

Ruth Williams is an IAAP Training and Supervising analyst based in London, UK. She is an Hon. Lecturer at the Dept. for Psychoanalytic and Psychosocial Studies at the University of Essex and Guest Professor at the Oriental Academy of Analytical Psychology in Guangzhou in China. She is the author of Jung: The Basics (Routledge 2019), Exploring Spirituality from a Post-Jungian Perspective: Clinical and Personal Reflections (2023), Animal-Human Telepathic Connections: A Jungian Perspective (Routledge forthcoming 2026). She is currently writing a fourth book. See www.RuthWilliams.org.uk.

Dr Deborah L. S. Wright, is a BPC registrant, a Psychotherapist in private practice and an Academic, Senior Lecturer (FHEA), and Programme Director of the Clinical Professional Doctorate Programs, in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at The University of Essex, (Professional Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program, Professional Doctorate in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program, Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology Program, and Professional Doctorate in Psychodynamic Counselling Program). Deborah is also an Artist, Printmaker, and Illustrator. Her academic and art works explore human’s relationships with spaces, places and rooms and her book, ‘The Physical and Virtual Space of the Consulting Room: Room-object spaces’ explores Room-object spaces and spatialisation.

Naomi Wynter-Vincent writes on the work of Wilfred Bion in relation to literary criticism, experimental and creative writing, and creative process. She is currently Assistant Professor within the English faculty at Northeastern University London. Her book, Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism, was published by Routledge in 2021, and she has presented in conferences in the UK, Italy, Finland, and Brazil. She holds a first degree from the University of Cambridge, master's degrees from Sussex and UCL, and completed her PhD with the University of Sussex. She is also an experienced somatic therapist (certified Advanced Rolfer and Rolf Movement practitioner) and coach in private practice, focusing on embodiment, body dysmorphia, and resilience.

I work at the intersection of psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis and their application to politics, culture and media. I bring together scholars, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and creative practitioners to explore emotion, affect and creativity in the arts, culture and public life. I am Director of The Psychocultural Agency, where I run The Book Clinic, offering coaching and editorial support to psychotherapists and academics writing for publication. I host The Psychocultural Podcast which applies psychoanalytic and psychosocial thinking to key words and themes in culture, politics and everyday experience. I have published widely on psychoanalytic, cultural and political themes in journal articles and books, including The Play of Political Culture and Emotion; Media and the Inner World. I am an editor on the Journal of Psychosocial Studies and New Associations, and Consulting Editor of the BPC/Routledge book series Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture. I am an Advisory Board Member and Trustee of the Association for Psychosocial Studies; Inaugural Academic Associate of The Freud Museum; a Founding Scholar of the BPC; and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.