Meet The Team

Professor Matthew Broome is Leader of the Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology Project. He is Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham; Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, and Visiting Professor, Suor Orsola Benicasa, University of Naples.  

Matthew’s research interests include youth mental health, the prodromal phase of psychosis, early intervention in psychosis, delusion formation, mood instability, neurodevelopmental disorders, functional neuroimaging, interdisciplinary methods, mental health humanities, and the philosophy of psychiatry. His research is funded by Wellcome, NIH, MRC, NIHR and the Wolfson Foundation.

Professor Giovanni Stanghellini is Leader of the Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology Project. He is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopathology at University of Florence (Italy), Dr. Phil. honoris causa, and profesor adjuncto at ‘D. Portales’ University in Santiago (Chile). He chairs the Scuola di Psicoterapia Fenomenologico-Dinamica in Florence (Italy), a four-year training programme for post-graduate medical doctors and psychologists who want to specialise in phenomenological-dynamic psychotherapy. He founded with KWM Fulford and JZ Sadler the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry and the Oxford University Press Series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry.

His research builds on and extends classic studies in clinical phenomenology and focuses on the understanding of the life-worlds inhabited by people affected by severe mental disorders like schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorders, investigating with empirical qualitative methods the way they experience time, space, their own body and other people. Recently, integrating clinical phenomenology with cultural studies and the work of authors like Georges Bataille and Walter Benjamin, he has been working on the “psychopathology of the present”, formulating phenomenological hypotheses about narcissistic and borderline conditions and so called “eating disorders”. He also developed the “PHD” psychotherapy method, an integrative approach based on phenomenology (P), hermeneutics (H) and psychodynamics (D). It combines concepts of the life-world with a dialectical view of psychopathology – which envisions the formation of symptoms as the outcome of the dynamics between the person and her vulnerability – and with the dialogical principle of human existence.

Dr Eleanor Byrne is a philosopher at the University of Birmingham. She works between the Institute for Mental Health and the Department of Philosophy on the projects Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology and Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare (EPIC).  She specialises in philosophical approaches to chronic illness (especially functional neurological disorder) and grief, drawing on work spanning the philosophy of psychiatry, emotion, epistemology and phenomenology. Eleanor’s recent work has a strong focus on affectivity, investigating how the emotional lives of patients with certain illnesses can be given and denied uptake by others.  

 

Andrew Maile joined the Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology project as a Research Fellow, alongside a concurrent research fellowship at the Institute for Mental Health, exploring the lived experiences of bullying amongst school children in Birmingham. He has previously worked on research exploring leadership and virtue ethics in professional settings at the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford. Andrew studied Human Biology at Stellenbosch University, Psychology at Rhodes University, and Character Education at Birmingham University. In his capacity as a Research Fellow on the RPP project, Andrew was particularly interested in exploring links between epistemic virtues and phenomenological psychopathology. 

Dr Lucienne Spencer is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Mental Health Ethics in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. Her research interests include phenomenology, epistemic injustice, and the philosophy of psychiatry. She completed her SWW-DTP funded PhD at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Havi Carel and Dr Lisa El Refaie. Her PhD thesis was entitled 'Breaking the Silence: A Phenomenological Account of Epistemic Injustice and its role in Psychiatry', for which she received no corrections. She is also a member of the executive committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK.

Dr Roxana Baiasu is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Mental Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. Her current interests include: philosophy of mental health and psychiatry and more specifically, the phenomenology and ethics of vulnerability,  mental health, resilience, well-being, and justice.