“Theory and the Clinic: Reconsidering Mental Health” is a four-part, discussion-based lecture series that aims to address the complex genesis of “mental health” as a topic of medical, academic, and social interest. The problem of how to address mental health has been adopted by a wide range of academic disciplines, as diverse as cognitive science, philosophy, sociology, and neuroscience. It has also been targeted by increasingly global public-awareness campaigns about well-being and self-care. Our series aims to situate discussions of mental health within a larger social, medical, and historical context, and prompt dialogue about the efficacy, and the limitations, of the biomedical model of well-being.

Sloan Mahone (Oxford): Psychiatry and Photography in Late Colonial Kenya (abstract)

Serene Richards and Nathan Moore (Birkbeck): Anti-Oedipus and Lessons from La Borde (abstract)

Derek Bolton (King’s College London): Mental health, power and politics: linking together some recent developments (abstract)

Sascha Altman Dubrul (Institute for the Development of Human Arts): Mad Resistance/Mad Alternatives: Democratising Mental Healthcare (abstract)

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Please feel free to circulate. The lectures can also be found on Facebook.

Organised by Juliana Broad.