Professor Lisa Baraitser

Overview

Biography

I am an interdisciplinary research scholar in Psychosocial Studies. My research brings psychoanalytic and social theory together to address the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care.

I have written widely on motherhood and the ethics of care, social reproduction, and the temporalities of maintenance, repetition and repair in relation to foreclosed futures. 

I have been part of the development of the field of Psychosocial Studies, and have written on methodological and epistemological issues in psychosocial theory and research.

My current research project is on waiting and healthcare in the UK National Health Service, funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Key works are Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (Routledge, 2009, joint-winner of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book Prize) and Enduring Time (Bloomsbury, 2017).

I hold degrees in Medical Science and Psychology (BSc., Hons), Counselling and Psychotherapy (MA), and Psychology (PhD) and I am a trained psychoanalyst (M. Inst. Psychoanal).

Prior to joining Birkbeck in 2005 I worked in a range of mental health settings that seek to address the psychological ramifications of violence, abuse and poverty in the lives of women. During this time I was also the Artistic Director of an experimental theatre collective.

Highlights

• I am currently co-Principal Investigator with Professor Laura Salisbury on Waiting Times, a Wellcome Trust collaborative award (£1.2 million), leading a team of 10 researchers to investigate the meanings of waiting in, and for, healthcare, in order to change academic and public understandings of what ‘timely’ care means. See http://waitingtimes.exeter.ac.uk/.

• Recent publications:

  Baraitser, L., (2023) ‘Time’ for ‘the People’: Reflections on ‘Psychoanalysis for the People: Free Clinics and the Social Mission of Psychoanalysis’. Psychoanalysis and History 2022 24:3, 375-392.

  Bastian, M. and Flatø, E. and Baraitser, Lisa and Jordheim, H. and Salisbury, L. and van Dooren, T. (2022) ‘What about the coffee break?’: Designing virtual conference spaces for conviviality. Geo: Geography and Environment 9 (2), pp. e00114. ISSN 2054-4049.

  Baraitser, L., (2020) The Maternal Death Drive: Greta Thunberg and the question of the future. Psychoanalysis, Culture, Society, 25(4): 499-517.
  

  Baraitser L., and Salisbury L. (2020) ‘Containment, delay, mitigation’: waiting and care in the time of a pandemic. Wellcome Open Res 2020, 5 (129).

• Recent Keynotes:

  2020 Stevens-Barchas Lecture “Enduring Time” as part of The Richardson Seminar on the History of Psychiatry. DeWitt Wallace Institute for Psychiatry. Cornell University. New York, USA. 

  2022 British Psychoanalytic Council NOW conference keynote 'On Being with Others Now', October 2022.

  2022, with artist Koki Tanaka, co-facilitated an international three day event at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKV), Berlin, in Where is the Planetary? October, 2022.

• Recent Podcasts:

  Lisa Baraitser speaks to Jordan Osserman about Enduring Time for the New Books in Psychoanalysis podcast series.

• Lisa Baraitser in conversation about the temporal politics of Covid-19 in the journal Ephemera

• Lisa Baraitser speaks to Stewart Motha about Enduring Time for the Countersign podcast.

• Lisa Baraitser speaks on BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking

Qualifications

• PhD Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, 2006
• MA Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of East London, 2000
• BSc Hons., Medical Science and Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 1990

Professional activities

I am founder of the Birkbeck Research Centre MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics) which provides a space for the critical re-evaluation of ‘the maternal’ as lived experience, social location, political and scientific practice, and economic and ethical challenge. MaMSIE hosts scholarly events, and publishes an open access peer-reviewed journal with The Open Library of the Humanities called Studies in the Maternal, which I co-edit.

I have organized a large number of academic and scholarly events. The most recent are: 

2022, Time for Emancipation: Poetry, Waiting, Repair. A participatory creative writing workshop and symposium in collaboration with Waiting Times, Birkbeck Arts Week, and Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality (BiGS). With poets Jenny Mitchell, Roy McFarlane, Keith Jarrett.

2022, Time Being: An exhibition about time and care by Ruairi Corr and Deborah Robinson. Peltz Gallery, London.

2021 The Material Life of Time, a 3 day international online conference co-hosted by Waiting Times (Birkbeck and University of Exeter), Temporal Belongings (University of Edinburgh), Life Times (University of Oslo) and the Sydney Environment Institute (University of Sydney).

In am Co-Editor of the online peer-reviewed journal Studies in the Maternal.

I am on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the International Advisory Board of Psychoanalysis, Culture, Society.

I am Associate Editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality and formerly the co-editor.

I sit on the advisory board of a number of book series that publish in the fields of psychoanalytic and psychosocial studies.  

I was a Mid-Career Fellow with the Independent Social Research Foundation in 2014-15.

Professional memberships

• Member: British Psychoanalytic Council

  Member: International Psychoanalytic Association

  Member: Institute of Psychoanalysis

  Member: Psychosocial Studies Network

  Fellow: Higher Education Academy

Honours and awards

• Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book Prize for Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (Routledge, 2009), Feminist and Women's Studies Association, November 2009
• Mid-Career Fellow, Independent Social Research Foundation, November 2014

Research

Research interests

• Temporal, affective and ethical dimensions of care
• Motherhood, maternity, maternal subjectivities, identities and ethics
• Psychoanalytic theory and practice
• Critical Time Studies
• Psychosocial Studies
• Medical Humanities

Research overview

My research is situated at the interface between Psychosocial Studies, Medical Humanities and Psychoanalytic Studies. As one of the founding members of the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, I am broadly interested in how to understand the relation between psychic and social life. 

My main research concerns the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care - from motherhood, through to healthcare - and the relation between care and forms of social violence. I have written widely on maternal subjectivity, temporality, care, violence and ethics from psychosocial perspectives.

I am currently co-Principal Investigator on Waiting Times, a Wellcome Trust collaborative award (£1.2 million). I lead a team of 10 researchers with Laura Salisbury at the University of Exeter, to investigate the meanings of waiting in, and for healthcare. 

Waiting Times has explored what it means to wait in and for healthcare by examining lived experiences, representations, and histories of impeded and delayed time. The project has mobilised a range of artistic and engaged research methodologies, as well as ethnographic, philosophical and historical investigations to consider different forms of suspended, elongated, and “non-productive” temporalities in different sites and practices: in forms of watchful waiting and recurrent waiting with that take place in general practice, mental health services, and trans care; within modes of chronic care and forms of time that are held and unfolded within psychotherapy; and as part of cultural framings, experiences, and care provided at the end of life.

Other research develops psychosocial and psychoanalytic theory, conceptualising ways that psychic life is inflected with social forms of power, and the ways the social world is always already conditioned by internal identifications and psychic investments. 

I am a trained psychoanalyst, and have research interests in psychoanalytic theory, especially its interface with feminist and queer theories of gender and sexuality. 

 

Research Centres and Institutes

• Director, Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics (MaMSIE)

Research clusters and groups

• Co-Principal Investigator, Waiting Times

Post doctoral staff

• Jordan Osserman
• Stephanie Davies

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I supervise PhD students working on time, care, motherhood, psychoanalytic theory and epistemological and methodological issues in Psychosocial Studies.

Teaching

I teach on the BA Psychosocial Studies, MA Psychoanalytic Studies and MA Psychosocial Studies. Modules include Love, Psychoanalytic and Social Theory, Creative Archives, and Psychoanalysis and Culture. I supervise Masters students across the department's portfolio, PhD students in Psychosocial Studies, Gender Studies, and Medical Humanities, and mentor post-doctoral researchers on the Waiting Times project. 

Publications

Business and community

Outreach

The Waiting Times project has an extensive public engagement programme including engagement through storytelling about waiting in and for healthcare with a range of hospices, GP surgeries, housing co-operatives, and NHS Trusts. See Waiting Times for further details. 

Artist events linked to Waiting Times include:

2022, February-April. Time Being: An exhibition. A 14-minute film about time and care by Ruairi Corr and Deborah Robinson. Peltz Gallery, London. 

2021 Martin O’Brien, The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin), a performance and installation at the ICA, London, July 2021.

Selected media includes: 

2020 Lisa Baraitser speaks about suspended time at The Alternative School of Economics: True Currency: About Feminist Economics, with artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck.

2020 Lisa Baraitser speaks to Stewart Motha about Enduring Time on the Countersign Podcast.  

2020 Lisa Baraitser speaks to Jordan Osserman about Enduring Time on the New Books Network.  

2019 BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking, Extinction Rebellion and the End of the World, 17th December 2019. With Rana Mitter, Lisa Baraitser, Rupert Read,  Nafeez Ahmed, and Tessa Khan.

2019 BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking, January 2019. On Boredom, with Josh Cohen, Shahidha Bari, Madeline Bunting, Sam Goodman and Rachel Long. 

2018 On Time, Care, and Not Moving On. Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Berlin

2018 Enduring and Broken Time: A conversation with Judith Butler. 

I am regularly invited to speak at a range of public and academic fora including arts organizations and events, psychotherapy and psychoanalytic institutions, NHS Trusts, and academic conferences.

Recent talks include:

2022 Keynote: On Being with Others Now. British Psychoanalytic Council conference, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy NOW, London, October 2022.

2022 With artist Koki Tanaka, Where is the Planetary? Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKV), Berlin, 14-17th October, 2022.

2021 Keynote ‘Enduring Time in Pandemic Times: Care, Violence and the Possibility of Containment’. The Unconscious and Everyday Life: Repair and Reparation: Clinical, Social, and Cultural Contexts, University of Essex.

2021 Keynote ‘Collaboration as Psychosocial Method: Notes from the Waiting Times project.’ Researching the Unconscious: The Essex Summer School in Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Research Methods. Freud Museum, London.

2022 Misogyny and its Roots. Intolerance to the Feminine, International Psychoanalytic Association, COWAP-Europe Conference, Rome, 22nd-23rd October 2022.

2022 Waiting Times. Camden and Islington Personality Disorder Unit. C&I NHS Foundation Trust. September, 2022.

2022 Parapraxis Conversations: On The Maternal. With Joy James and Sarah Knott. July 2022.

2021 Care, Waiting and Utopia. & Utopia public lecture series, University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, and California Institute of the Arts, MA Aesthetics and Politics Programme.