Professor Lisa Baraitser

Overview

Biography

I joined Birkbeck in 2005, and have been involved in the development of the field of Psychosocial Studies ever since.

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

Between 1995 and 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.

Since 2005, I have been an interdisciplinary research scholar working at the interface between psychoanalytic and social theory, and qualitative empirical research. My research brings psychoanalytic and social theory together to address the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care. My current research is on time and healthcare.

 

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., (2020) The Maternal Death Drive: Greta Thunberg and the question of the future. Psychoanalysis, Culture, Society.
  

• 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 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

• Recent Keynotes:

  Lisa Baraitser gives 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. 

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

• Lisa Baraitser speaks on BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking, January 2019.

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, Studies in the Maternal, which I co-edit.

I am former co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality (2013-16) and on the International Advisory Board for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society.

I am Co-Editor of the book series Genders and Sexualities in Minds and Cultures (Routledge); and Advisory Board Member of Figures of the Unconscious (Leuven University Press).

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

I am a member of the Wellcome Trust’s Senior Social Science and Bioethics Expert Review Group.

I am a psychoanalyst in London (M. Inst. Psychoanal).

Professional memberships

• Member: Institute of Psychoanalysis/British Psychoanalytical Society

  Accredited and Registered Psychotherapist: British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy 

  Member: British Psychoanalytic Council

  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
• Recent Keynotes: Stevens-Barchas Lecture “Enduring Time” as part of The Richardson Seminar on the History of Psychiatry., DeWitt Wallace Institute for Psychiatry. Cornell University. , August 2021

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

I am an interdisciplinary research scholar working in Psychosocial Studies. As one of the founding members of the Department of Psychosocial Studies in 2009, and Assistant Dean (Head of Department) from 2011-14, I am broadly interested in the relation between psychic and social life.

My research concerns the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care - from motherhood, through to healthcare - and I have written widely on maternal subjectivity, temporality, care 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. We are working to develop a critical, historical, and culturally contextualised understanding of waiting in contemporary life in order to intervene in academic and public understandings of what ‘timely’ care means.

I am founder of the Birkbeck Research Centre MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics) which provides spaces for the critical re-evaluation of ‘the maternal’ as lived experience, social location, political and scientific practice, and economic and ethical challenge. MaMSIE organizes and hosts scholarly events, and collates and publishes scholarly and aesthetic work on motherhood through its open access peer-reviewed journal, Studies in the Maternal, which I co-edit. 

 

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
• Magda-Agata Schmukalla

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

5

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

Current doctoral researchers

• STEPHANIE DAVIES

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  An investigation of ‘watchful waiting’ as used by general practitioners as a practice of care

Doctoral alumni

• ALAN BRISTOW

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2013

  Title of thesis:

  Mad Knowledge in the Age of Mad Studies: On ‘Psychosis’, Writing and the Possibility of Interpretation

  Awarded:

  2020

• JONAS GREEN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2013

  Title of thesis:

  Losing Oneself: The enigmatic other and the will to know in François Ozon's cinema

  Awarded:

  2020

• RONI BOR

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2008

  Title of thesis:

  Fight, Flight, Freeze, (For)give: What do we hear when we listen to child psychotherapists talk about parents and parent work in the context of their daily practice

  Awarded:

  2020

• AMANDA AUSTEN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2008

  Title of thesis:

  Psychotherapy Research

  Awarded:

  2016

Teaching

I teach on the BA Psychosocial Studies and the MA Psychoanalytic Studies

Teaching modules

• Sexuality (SSPA093H5)

Publications