Areas of Focus
My teaching and research interests centre on experiences that challenge conventional understandings of psychological functioning, and that often sit at the intersection of psychopathology, meaning-making, and identity. These are areas that demand both clinical sensitivity and theoretical nuance, and which invite sustained reflection on the human condition.
One area of focus is psychosis and psychotic states. I approach these not solely as clinical syndromes, but as complex, often intelligible responses to psychological fragmentation, trauma, or existential rupture. I am particularly interested in how these states disrupt normative assumptions about selfhood, perception, and relationality, and how they might be understood within symbolic or narrative frameworks.
I am also engaged in the study of spiritual crisis, especially where experiences of disintegration or transcendence resist easy categorisation. Such crises often involve a destabilisation of personal meaning systems, and may emerge as profound encounters with loss, transformation, or the numinous. They raise important clinical and philosophical questions about the boundaries between pathology and growth.
My work on eating disorders examines the interplay between embodiment, relational trauma, and identity formation. I view eating disorders not simply as behavioural disorders, but as psychodynamically and culturally embedded expressions of psychological distress. I am particularly interested in how issues of control, silence, and visibility are negotiated through the body.
A further area of interest involves trans identities and the processes by which gendered subjectivities are constructed, contested, and affirmed. I consider gender as both a lived experience and a psycho-social phenomenon, exploring its unfolding through developmental, relational, and symbolic lenses. This includes a commitment to affirming care and to critical engagement with prevailing clinical discourses.
A Pedagogy of Depth and Ethics
Together, these themes inform an integrative and ethically grounded approach to teaching—one that encourages students to think critically, reflexively, and with emotional depth about the clinical realities they may encounter. I teach using:
- Personal and relational reflection
- Thematic discussions informed by diverse psychological traditions
- Experiential encounters with theory
- An emphasis on meaning-making over performance
Themes That Anchor My Curiosity
- The lived landscape of psychosis and altered states of mind
- Spiritual crisis as a threshold and transformation
- The symbolic and relational dimensions of eating disorders
- Explorations of trans identities and the unfolding of selfhood