Skip to main content

Who we are

Members of the research project are...




Francesca Brencio is Associate Researcher at the Research Group "Filosofía Aplicada: Sujeto, Sufrimiento, Sociedad" at the University of Seville (Spain), and member of The Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice at the S. Catherine College at the University of Oxford (UK). She leads the Pheno-Lab, A Theoretical Laboratory on Philosophy and Mental Health. She also works as a philosophical counselor.
More info at:
https://us.academia.edu/FrancescaBrencio
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francesca-Brencio




Susi Ferrarello, is associate professor at California State University, East Bay. She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris, a master’s in Human Rights and Political Science from the University of Bologna. Among her books, The Ethics of Love (Routledge, 2023), Human Emotions and the Origin of Bioethics (Routledge, 2021), Husserl's Ethics and Practical Intentionality (Bloomsbury, 2015). She writes for Psychology Today and also works as a philosophical counselor.
More info at:
https://www.csueastbay.edu/directory/profiles/phil/ferrarellosusi.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lying-the-philosophers-couch
https://csueastbay.academia.edu/SusiFerrarello





Pierrick Simon is a french independent philosophy researcher specialized in phenomenology and in philosophy as a way of life. He focuses on the potential of philosophy for therapy and happiness. For this purpose, he studies mindfulness, spiritual exercises, and remedies to toxic political polarization.
More info at: 





Lucienne Spencer is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Mental Health Ethics at the University of Oxford. She is working on a Wellcome Trust project investigating the underlying mechanisms of psychological therapy for anxiety and depression in young people, led by Prof Ilina Singh and Prof Argyris Stringaris. Her research interests include phenomenology, epistemic injustice, and the philosophy of psychiatry. Her website is https://luciennespencer.com 
More info at: 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Curiosity Exercises, Plutarch, and Quitting Obsessions

 As someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and as someone who is really into trying the various exercises that philosophers like to prescribe sometimes, I always wonder how various philosophical practices would interact with my disorder. I gave myself a challenge for the year 2024: to commit to practicing one new philosophical exercise each month, and to write about it on my blog .   Because of the Stuck on the Puzzle project, I decided, for January 2024, to take on Plutarch’s anti-curiosity exercises, described in his essay On Curiosity [1]   Indeed, I was specifically interested in seeing if those exercises could help counteract OCD. Reflecting on my own OCD, I came to agree with Juliette Vazard’s assessment that this disorder must have something to do with a dysfunction of the mechanism that normally leads someone to pick out things worth inquiring into [2] .  She describes two linked affective mechanisms: one mechanism to assess if a proposition has stak...
Post a Comment
Read more

Stuck on the puzzle. A philosophical inquiry on OCD

The idea   Stuck on the puzzle. A philosophical inquiry on OCD  aims to provide a philosophical understanding on experiences of compulsions, obsessions and intense uncertainty, commonly through the contribution of people experiencing such phenomena. These experiences are typically thought of as part of an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but you do not have to be officially diagnosed as such or identify with this label in order to talk to us.  We are a goup of philosophers interested in people’s experiences. Some of us, who are conceiving this project, do have OCD, and this is what motivates us to initiate a dialogue on this theme, bringing together philosophical resources, especially those coming from the field of phenomenology, and lived experiences.  We are planning to create a podcast featuring a dialogue with people who have, or have had, these experiences. We believe that this kind of conversations can reveal certain aspects that are useful for society to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Weltschmerz. Not always pure is the snow

I was eager to help. Now ghosts visit at night, memories haunt me. I’d like to go back. Ghosts come and visit because I am still committed to helping. They don’t want me to go back. It is a conflict upon values. Let me share what I’ve learnt. Experiencing obsessions and compulsions does not have primarily to do with washing or checking, nor with control or certainty, rather with values, acceptance, freedom. I wanna go back. Let me go back. It was November, it was cold, and the snow outside just claimed another victim. Berlin’s Winter can be harsh, especially if you have got no roof over your head. Until that very day, I had felt extremely helpless before homeless people. My friend had found an open-air soup kitchen and gently nudged me to give it a try, together. Under Berlin’s grey sky, there they were. Hundreds of hungry, miserable existences were there, queueing to have some food, perhaps some clothes, and most importantly, a dialogue with another human being. Indeed, any kind of in...
Post a Comment
Read more