Dance Movement Psychotherapy, ecopsychology, new materialism, posthuman subjectivity, critical disability studies.
Dr Caroline Frizell is a research active senior lecturer in Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) at Goldsmiths, where she has worked since since 2007. She served as Programme Convenor for the MA DMP from 2010-2019 and is now Admissions Tutor. Caroline is a UKCP therapist and supervisor, with a diploma in supervision from the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP). Caroline's PhD by publication addressed the intersections of DMP, ecopsychotherapy and critical disability studies. For over two decades, Caroline has been an active member of ADMP UK and is currently on the UKCP accreditation committee. She previously served as editor for the quarterly journal, as a member of the Professional Development Committee, the UKCP working group and the Education and Training Committee. Caroline is also on the editorial and advisory board of the journal ‘Dance Movement and Spiritualities’ and Goldsmiths’ representative for the European Consortium for Arts Therapies Education (ECArTE).
Academic qualifications
PhD
Diploma in Supervision: Society of Analytical Psychology
MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy
UKCP Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist
Research interests
Caroline has engaged with new materialist, posthuman lenses to develop a thematic focus on posthuman subjectivity. Her research inquiries explore the concept of posthuman subjectivity as it manifests in transdisciplinary practices of dance as a participatory process, ecopsychology as a practice that locates the human subject within a wider ecology and, critical disability studies as a portal to non-binary practice. These diffractive intersections unveil power-laden, discourses that have subordinated matters of the body, privileging particular bodies over others. The creation of assemblages that explore the body as process, the environmentally contextualised human subject and the (dis)abled body, problematises notions of the human subject and reaches towards posthuman subjectivity. Caroline's practice-led inquiry employs diffractive analysis in challenging binary discourses, towards considering matters that have been made to matter less, hold the potential for redefining the ways in which identities are organised and subjectivities conceived and performed. Caroline's practice-led research moves transversally across disciplines and genres, troubling the privileging of knowledge as it manifests in the material properties of dance, text, photography and film and with an emphasis on transdisciplinarity. In moving towards the posthuman dancing subject, Caroline considers the transdisciplinary potential of diffracting across dance movement psychotherapy (DMP), ecopsychotherapy and critical disability studies, embedding the notion of the posthuman subject into practice in a way that is emancipatory and decolonising.
Featured publications
2020:
Learning disability imagined differently: an evaluation of interviews with parents about discovering that their child has Down’s Syndrome
This article presents a research project using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to evaluate interviews with parents of children with Down's syndrome.
2020:
Reclaiming our innate vitality: bringing embodied narratives to life through Dance Movement Psychotherapy.
This is a chapter in and anthology of feminist research by A. Williamson and B. Sellers-Young, (eds.) entiltled Spiritual Herstories: Call of the soul in dance research. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 207-22
Frizell, Caroline. 2023. Coming home to a posthuman body. In: Linda Aspey; Catherine Jackson and Diane Parker, eds. Holding the Hope: reviving psychological & spiritual agency in the face of climate change. Monmouth: PCCS Books, pp. 76-85. ISBN 9781915220271
Frizell, Caroline and Rova, Marina. 2023. Arriving, becoming and arriving again. In: Caroline Frizell and Marina Rova, eds. Creative Bodies in Therapy, Performance and Community: Research and Practice that Brings us Home. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1-11. ISBN 9781032119809
Frizell, Caroline. 2016. 'Coming to our senses'. In: Eco-Psychotherapy: Healing and the Natural World. London Wetlands Centre, United Kingdom 18 March 2017.
