Deputy Head of Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex
I teach a course on several UG programmes, BA Therapeutic Communication and Therapeutic Organisations, BA Therapeutic care, for those working with, or interested in working with troubled and traumatised children and adolescents and adults. Before joining the Department, I worked in a range of children's services for over ten years. Among other roles I was the Admissions and Assessment Officer at the Jacques Hall Foundation and Therapeutic Services Manager at Donyland Lodge, both therapeutic communities for traumatised adolescents.
I completed my doctoral thesis on the poet Robert Graves in 2007. Entitled: 'The Enduring Wound: Re-contextualising Goodbye to All That, The White Goddess and the Poetry of Robert Graves', the thesis uses a psychodynamic frame to place Graves' life and key writings in the light of his traumatic war experiences, and explores connections between trauma and modernism.
I am currently on the Advisory Board for Children and Young People at the College Cenre for Quality Improvement, Royal College of Psychiatrists and sit on the Editorial Board of Gravesiana, the Journal of the Robert Graves Society. I have published papers in the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities and in Gravesiana, and am a regular speaker at the bi-annual Robert Graves conferences among others. My book, co-edited with Professor Michael Irwin and Dr Kedar Nath Dwivedi, 'Children and Adolescents in Trauma: Creative Therapeutic Approaches' was published in January 2010.
More teenage girls are self harming than ever before – here's why
Oct 23, 2017 15:51 pm UTC| Health
A recent storyline on TV soap Hollyoaks has been praised as a masterpiece of televion after focusing on the issue of self harm in young people. The show, which worked with charities Samaritans and Mind on the episode,...
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