Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr. Lisa Blackman

Lisa Blackman works at the intersection of critical psychology and cultural theory and is particularly interested in subjectivity, affect, the body and embodiment. She has published two books in this area, Hearing Voices: Embodiment and Experience (Free Association Books) and Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media Studies (with Valerie Walkerdine; Palgrave). She is currently completing two manuscripts. The first is a general overview of ‘body-theory’, The Body: The Key Concepts (2008, Berg). The second Feeling Fine: Affect, Relationality and the Problem of Personality (2008) is an investigation of the importance of suggestion and contagious communication for thinking about affect, the body and subjectivity within social and cultural theory. She has a number of publications forthcoming in 2007 and 2008 in key journals that are based on the book (New Formations, Economy and Society, Theory, Culture and Society, Body and Society).

Areas of supervision

Lisa has been supervising a number of students who have recently completed in the areas of both critical psychology and cultural theory. These include the areas of Consumption, Lifestyle and Identity, Chick Lit, Media Effects and the Third Person Effect and Young girls, hyper-sexualiation in music videos and postfemininity. She is particularly keen to supervise students interested in the body and embodiment, contagious communication (in the areas of advertising and marketing), affect and subjectivity, psychiatric culture, new forms of subjectivity.

Research interests

Her previous research has been in the areas of psychiatric culture and the cultural production of psychopathology and magazine culture (AHRB grant, Inventing the Psychological). She is currently working on a research bid to explore the emergence and concept of ‘emotional branding’ and its links to suggestive communication. She is one of the members of the research group, Affect, Subjectivity and the Body, is one of the founding editors of Subjectivity: The International Journal of Critical Psychology (Palgrave) and has worked with the Hearing Voices Network.

Selected publications

Books

The Body: The Key Concepts (Berg, 2008).

Hearing Voices: Embodiment and Experience, Free Association Books, 2001.

Mass Hysteria, Critical Psychology and Media Studies (with Valerie Walkerdine), Palgrave Press, 2001.

Articles

'Ethics, Embodiment and the Voice - Hearing Experience', Theory, Culture and Society, 17: 5, 2000, 55-74.

'An Extraordinary Life; the legacy of an ambivalence', New Formations, 36, 1999, 111-124.

'The Voice Hearing Experience', Nordiske Vokast, 1, 1998, 39-49.

'Rehearsal of Memory', Journal of the Moving Image, 4, 1997, 17-28.

'A Psychophysics of the Imagination' in Valerie Wallkerdine 9ed.), Challenging Subjects, Palgrave, 2002, 133-148.

'Beyond the fragile chains we call autonomy' in W. Maiers, B. Boyer, B, Esgalhado, R. Jorna, E. Schaube (eds.), Challenges to Theoretical Psychology, Captus Press, Ontario, 1999, 191-199.

'Culture, Technology and Subjectivity', in J. Wood (ed.) The Virtual Embodied Presence/Practice/Technology, Routledge, 1998 London, 132-146.

‘Self-help, Media Cultures and the Production of Female Psychopathology’. European Journal of Cultural Studies (2004). (7(2) pp241-258.

‘The Dialogical Self, Flexibility and the Cultural Production of Psychopathology’. Theory and Psychology, (2005). Vol. 15(2):183-206.

‘Inventing the Psychological: Lifestyle Magazines and the Fiction of Autonomous Selfhood’ in J. Curran and D.Morley (eds). Media and Cultural Theory.  Routledge: London and New York (2006).

‘It’s Down to You. Psychology, Magazine Culture and the Governing of the Female Body’ in Reed, L and Saukko, P (eds) Governing the Female Body: Gender, Health and Economies of Power. University of California Press. (2007).

‘Psychiatric Culture and Bodies of Resistance’. Body and Society (June 2007).

‘Reinventing Psychological Matters: The Suggestive Realm of Tarde’s Ontology’. Economy and Society (November 2007).

Guest Editor with J. Cromby of a special issue of the International Journal of Critical Psychology on ‘Feelings’ (November 2007).

‘Feeling FINE: Social Psychology and the Problem of Social Influence’. International Journal of Critical Psychology (special issue on Feelings). (November 2007).

‘Is Happiness Contagious?’ New Formations (January 2008).

‘Affect, Relationality and the Problem of Personality’. Theory, Culture and Society (2008).