Dr Esther Ramsay-Jones

Overview

Biography

Esther is a practising psychodynamic psychotherapist and counsellor. She has worked in university counselling settings and in palliative care contexts, also clinically supervising nursing and allied healthcare professionals, as well as in private practice. As well as lecturing at Birkbeck, she is also a tutor at the Open University on Mental Health and Counselling; Critical Reader of counselling material; researcher on an end-of-life and older people's care project. She also taught for several years on Death, Dying and Bereavement.

Her PhD explored the relational field in dementia care, under the supervision of Dr Gail Lewis and Dr Peter Redman. The work involved psychoanalytically informed ethnography in two different care homes - observing the conscious and unconscious micro-interactions between carer and cared-for - as well as seeking to understand how the relational had been constructed in national policy. This led to an examination of the incidences of tension between policy and the realities of psychic and embodied experiences of those involved in care.

Current research interests focus on the application of psychoanalytic thinking to the care field of older people living with dementia and of those coming to terms with the end of life.

Office hours

Mon-Weds

Qualifications

PhD, Open University, 2018
MSc Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy, Birkbeck College, 2011

Professional memberships

British Psychoanalytic Council
APPCIOS

Honours and awards

Best Personal Tutor, Birkbeck Students Union Awards, December 2023
Highly Commended , WELS Health, Wellbeing and Social Care Awards, Open University, December 2022

Research

Research interests

End of Life Care practice and innovation
Experiences of grief and bereavement
The relational field in dementia care settings
Pedagogy and teaching of the psychosocial discipline

Supervision and teaching

Teaching

Teaching modules

Clinical Thinking (SSPA028S7)
Psychosocial and Psychodynamic Practice (SSPA030S7)
Introduction to Counselling (non-credit bearing) (SSPA116N0)
Introduction to Counselling (SSPA172S4)
Understanding Therapeutic Practice (SSPA173S4)

Publications