Faculty Member, Human and Life Sciences
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Psychotherapy
Thesis Title: A Grammar of Transformation: analysing anthropologically the construction of the psychotherapeutic practitioner
Professor David Parkin (All Souls College, Oxford)
About
I completed my D.Phil in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford, in 2006. My doctorate was on ‘healing epistemologies’ and the community I studied was the psychoanalytic community in London. A reworked version of my thesis is now published by Karnac Press:
Davies, J. (2009). 'The Making of Psychotherapists: an anthropological analysis'. London: Karnac Press.
Since completing my first book I have co-edited two books on fieldwork methodology:
Davies, J. & Spencer, D. (2009) 'Emotions in the Field: the psychology and anthropology of fieldwork expereince. Stanford: Stanford University Press (in press). (Wrote the Introduction and Chapter 3).
Davies, J. & Spencer, D. (2009) Anthropological Fieldwork: A relational process. Cambridge: Cambrdige Scholars Press (in press)
I am currently midway through writing and researching my fourth book. This is an anthropological analysis of contemporary perceptions, responses to, and modes of managing emotional suffering. I am particularly interested
in how many of these responses more exacerbate than alleviate emotional discontent in modern society. Among other things, I use anthropological theory and research to highlight the prevalence and machinations of what I call ‘anaesthetic regimes’ – curative industries, which, in the name of healing, exacerbate the suffering from which they economically benefit.
I am also a qualified and practicing psychotherapist (UKCP) working in the NHS.
Contact Information
St Cross College
St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3LZ
