Fellows

Galit Atlas, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and the bestselling author of Emotional Inheritance (Little, Brown Spark) and Come Closer (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster). She is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Her books for clinicians include The Enigma of Desire; Dramatic Dialogue: Contemporary Clinical Practice (with Lewis Aron); and When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron (editor). She serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and her honors include the André François Award, the NADTA Research Award, the Gradiva Award, and the Nautilus Book Award. A leading voice in relational psychoanalysis, Atlas teaches and lectures throughout the United States and internationally, and her work has been translated into 31 languages.

Erika Bachiochi is a Professor of Practice at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University where she teaches courses in the history of political thought, directs the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative for Women in Civic Life and Thought, and serves as founding editor-in-chief of its online journal, Fairer Disputations. A 2018 visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, she is a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute and a Fellow at EPPC. In addition to her academic publishing, her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, First Things,  and National Affairs,  among others. Bachiochi serves on several advisory boards, including the Center for Law and the Human Person and the American Institute for Boys and Men. Author of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, she is a co-founder of St. Benedict Classical Academy, and a Trustee of Montrose School.

D. Graham Burnett is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science at Princeton University. The founder of the non-profit Institute for Sustained Attention, Burnett currently heads the Institute’s flagship project, the Strother School of Radical Attention. Recent related collaborative books include: Twelve Theses on Attention (Princeton, 2022), Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses (Columbia, 2023), and Attensity! (Crown, 2026), the latter a manifesto of the international “Friends of Attention” coalition. He co-curated the “Practices of Attention” program at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial, and is associated with the speculative collective ESTAR(SER). In 2023, he was a visiting artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland, and in 2026 he was in residence at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. His next book, Till the Light Leaps: Essays on Playing Attention, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in early 2027.

Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of twenty-five books, including Very Little… Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009), The Faith of the Faithless (2012), Tragedy, the Greeks and Us (2019) and Mysticism (2024), alongside a novella, Memory Theatre (2015), and enjoys the study of David Bowie and football. He was moderator of "The Stone", a philosophy column in The New York Times. He is 50% of an obscure musical combo, Critchley & Simmons. His latest book is Heidegger Thinking (2026).

Verónica Fernández Espinosa is a professor at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid, Spain) and Founder and Director of its Center for Character and Virtue Education. She holds a PhD in Education and has extensive international experience in educational leadership, teacher development, and character education.

She is Co-founder and Vice-President of the European Character and Virtue Association (ECVA) and serves on international advisory boards advancing character education and human flourishing. Her research explores virtue ethics, practical wisdom, moral development, and virtue-based leadership, with particular attention to how education fosters personal and communal flourishing. She has published internationally and collaborates with universities and research centers across Europe and Latin America.

Her academic work brings together philosophy, psychology, and education, seeking to understand how virtues, meaningful relationships, and educational communities contribute to human flourishing and the development of persons capable of transforming society.

Brian Goldstone is a journalist, anthropologist, author of There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The book was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2025 by The New York Times and The Atlantic, and selected as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. His longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, and The California Sunday Magazine, among other publications. He is currently Writer in Residence at Duke University. He holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke and was a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University.

Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and writer. She is faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is a Cultural Imagination Fellow at Boston College’s Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. She is the therapist and consulting producer of Couples Therapy, airing on Showtime/Paramount+, and the author of the forthcoming book COUPLES: On Loving Another, coming out from Penguin Press on February 9, 2027.

Professor Tom Harrison is Professor of Education, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham. He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Birmingham and has over three decades of experience across higher education, policy, and the voluntary sector.

Professor Harrison is internationally recognised for his research on character education, virtue ethics, and the ethical challenges of digital life, including online behaviour, digital-wisdom, and emerging technologies such as AI and virtual reality. He has published extensively in leading journals and books, including THRIVE: How to Cultivate Character in the Digital Age, and has contributed to major international volumes on character development. He is a regular senior policy adviser on these topics.

He played a central role in developing the Jubilee Centre’s theoretical and practical approaches to character education, which has influenced education policy in the UK and internationally. He has partnered with and advised governments, ministries of education, NGOs and other organisations across Europe, US, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Professor Harrison is a National Teaching Fellow and HE Principal Fellow. Beyond academia, he is a co-founder of the Association for Character Education, European Character Virtues Association and the Global Character Association.

L. Gregory Jones is the President of Belmont University. Prior to serving at Belmont, Greg served in a variety of faculty and administrative leadership roles at Duke University and Duke Divinity School. Greg is known as a leader and strategist whose creative engagement has helped institutions across the world and in local communities to create transformational resource models. He is known for an entrepreneurial mindset as well as emphases on character and purpose in higher education (especially at Belmont).

He is the author or editor of 20 books, and he has authored more than 200 essays/articles. He is known for books on forgiveness (Embodying Forgiveness and the co-authored Forgiving as We’ve Been Forgiven), Christian leadership (the co-authored Resurrecting Excellence) and social innovation (Christian Social Innovation). His most recent books are the co-authored Navigating the Future: Traditioned Innovation for Wilder Seas (2021) and The Belmont Way: Education with Soul (forthcoming 2026).

Lynne Layton is a writer, social activist, and faculty and member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and Harvard Medical School. She was on the organizing committee of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign from 2018 till 2025 and is on the core team of the Reparations Interfaith Coalition of Massachusetts and Jewish Psychologists for Justice. She has taught culture and psychoanalysis at her institute, at Harvard College, and at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

From 2004-2017, she co-edited the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and the author of two books, Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory (with Marianna Leavy-Sperounis), Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes, winner of a 2021 book award from the American Academy and Board of Psychoanalysis. In 2024, she received the Hans Loewald award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.

Arthur Kleinman, MD, is a retired Harvard professor of global health, psychiatry, and anthropology whose work has transformed psychiatry, medical anthropology, and global health. Author of The Soul of Care and numerous influential books, he taught at Harvard for 50 years, mentored generations of scholars, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Cheryl A. Maurana, PhD, is Stephen and Shelagh Roell Endowed Chair, Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, and Senior Vice President for Academic Partnerships at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She is Founding Director of the Kern National Network for Flourishing in Health, a movement that advances character, caring, practical wisdom, and human flourishing, engaging with approximately 80 member institutions.

Dr. Maurana has coalesced numerous academic institutions and communities to advance change. As Provost, she led efforts to envision MCW as a flourishing health sciences university, and as Founding Director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment she led the investment of approximately $425M in initiatives to improve health. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, and is deeply committed to freedom of expression, civil discourse, and bridging across differences.

Recognized as an MCW Eminent Scholar, Dr. Maurana is committed to fostering environments where people, institutions, and communities can flourish.

Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. She is a historical sociologist whose work examines the past on order to consider how to live well in the present and envision wisely for the future. She is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017) and The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature (Classical Academic Press, 2022, co-authored with Anika Prather). Parham has published articles in popular outlets including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, and Common Good Magazine. She is the co-founder and executive director of Nyansa Classical Community which provides curricula designed to connect with students from diverse backgrounds, inviting them to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty and to cultivate the moral imagination.

Daniel R. Porterfield is CEO of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, one of the nation’s largest education opportunity philanthropies, and Chair of the National Board of Directors of Teach For America.

From 2018 to 2026, Dan served as President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, where he was recognized as a visionary leader, strategist, and advocate for purpose-driven leadership. A lifelong educator, he is the author of Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth. He was President of Franklin & Marshall College from 2011-2018 and previously held leadership and faculty roles at Georgetown University. Dan has served on many nonprofit boards, including American University, the College Board, Jesuit Refugee Services, and the Cristo Rey Network. He was named a White House Champion of Change in 2016.

Dan earned BA degrees from Georgetown and Oxford and a PhD from The City University of New York Graduate Center.

Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard University. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics. He is the recipient of the 2017 Presidents’ Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS). Dr. VanderWeele has published over 600 papers in peer-reviewed journals, is author of the books Explanation in Causal Inference (2015), Modern Epidemiology (2021), Measuring Well-Being (2021), Handbook of Religion and Health (2023), and A Theology of Health (2024); and writes a monthly blog posting on topics related to human flourishing for Psychology Today.

Rev. Chris Adams, PhD, is a third-generation pastor's kid, ordained minister, clinical psychologist, and certified wellbeing and leadership coach. He has served in pastoral care and counseling roles in a large congregation and a large Christian university. He specializes in the wellbeing of ministerial students, clergy, and their families. Chris currently serves as Professor and Executive Director of the Mental Health and the Church initiative at Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Biola University. Chris teaches pastoral care and counseling, Christian leadership formation, and psychology and Christianity integration courses for Rosemead and several seminaries. Chris is a consultant to numerous denominations and seminaries in the areas of clergy candidate formative evaluation, clergy health and flourishing, and pastoral leadership formation. He is the lead researcher for the Flourishing in Ministry project.

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about psychology, medical ethics, and criminal justice, among other subjects. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and the winner of a George Polk Award and a National Magazine Award. She is the author of You Won’t Get Free of It and Strangers to Ourselves, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times bestseller.

Dr Francesca Brencio is an internationally recognised scholar in the field of phenomenology, philosophy of psychiatry and medical humanities. Her research bridges continental philosophical traditions with clinical and empirical questions in mental health sciences. She is Teaching Fellow at the Institute for Mental Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham (UK), and Deputy Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology. Dr Brencio is the Director of the PhenoLab, a laboratory for phenomenology and mental health recognised as an organisational partner of the Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice at St Catherine’s College, Oxford (UK). Through the work of the PhenoLab, Dr Brencio has developed a distinctive transdisciplinary programme that moves fluidly between conceptual analysis and applied clinical contexts, generating frameworks for a better understanding of lived experience and psychopathology. Dr Brencio also works as a Certified APPA Philosophical Counsellor. For a complete list of her publications, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/francescabrencio.

Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, Social Welfare, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY and founding faculty member of The Public Science Project, a university-community research space designed in collaboration with movements for racial and educational justice. She is also a Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa (UNISA) Psychology department and a Visiting Schoolar at Moondani Balluk Indigenous Research Institute at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.

Recently admitted to the National Academy of Education, as a scholar, expert witness in litigation, a teacher and an educational activist, her work centers theoretically and epistemically on questions of knowledge production – whose knowledge matters? As well as focusing broadly on justice and dignity, privilege and oppression, and how solidarities emerge across movements, in schools and in prisons. She taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1981 – 1991, and then came to the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has served as an expert witness in a range of educational, racial and gender justice class action lawsuits including girls suing for access to Central High School in Philadelphia and The Citadel in South Carolina, students of color suing for racial equity in Wedowee Alabama, youth fighting for equitable financing and facilities in Williams v. State of California, and most recently a finance inequity lawsuit for the children of Baltimore. With a rich international network of collaborators and activist scholar colleagues, she has spent time teaching and researching at the Institute for Maori Studies in Auckland, New Zealand, the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London, University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Universidad Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, and at the Euroclio Institute in Nicosia Cypress. She is also the author or co-author/editor or co-editor of more than 20 books and policy briefs

Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D. is the Fordham University Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, Professor of Psychology, and Director of the Center for Ethics Education and the HIV/Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Institute. She has chaired the NYS Psychology Licensing Board, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Human Studies Review Board and Ethics Code Task Forces for the American Psychological Association, the American Public Health Association, and the Society for Research in Child Development and served on the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Subjects Research Protections. A Fellow of AAAS, she authored Decoding the Ethics Code (5th edition), and over 200 publications on understanding and reducing health inequities among marginalized populations and professional and scientific ethics. Awards include Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Human Research Protections and APA Award for Outstanding Contributions to Ethics Education.

Mark Freeman, Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society Emeritus, Psychology, at the College of the Holy Cross, is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College. Author of Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative, Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward, The Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self, Do I Look at You with Love? Reimagining the Story of Dementia and, most recently, Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology. He is also Editor for the Oxford University Press series Explorations in Narrative Psychology.

Roger Frie is University Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education at the University of Vienna, Austria, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He also teaches at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology and the NYU Postdoctoral Program of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and is an associate member of the Columbia University Seminar on Cultural Memory in New York. He is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst as well as a historian and social philosopher. He is the author most recently of Wounds of Silence: Legacies of Genocide and Racial Violence (Oxford), Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism, and the Holocaust (Oxford) and Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust (Oxford), and is co-editor of the journal, Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Sheldon George is Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston. George’s scholarship focuses on race and racism through a study of culture, literature, and theory. His book Trauma and Race, published in 2016, was the first to offer an extended Lacanian analysis of African American racial identity. George is coeditor of Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers (2020). His publications include the pioneering collection Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalytic Theory (2021). His most recent book, in 2024, is Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women’s Writing: Race and Narrative Innovation. George is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Literature forum of the MLA. He holds the title of Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Joseph P. Gone, Ph.D., is the Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program and an international expert in the psychology and mental health of American Indians and other Indigenous Peoples. A professor at Harvard University, Dr. Gone has collaborated with tribal communities for over 30 years to critique conventional mental health services and to harness traditional culture and spirituality for advancing Indigenous well-being. As a clinical-community psychologist and action researcher, he has published over 130 scientific articles and received recognition in his fields through more than 25 fellowships and career awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. An enrolled member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana, he also served briefly as the Chief Administrative Officer for the Fort Belknap Indian reservation. In 2023, Gone received a Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Judith Lewis Herman M.D. is Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry (part time) at Harvard Medical School. For thirty years, until she retired, she was Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, MA. She is the author of the award-winning books Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University Press, 1981), and Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1984 and the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2007 she was named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Her newest book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, was published in March, 2023.

Derek Hook is a professor and clinical supervisor in the psychology department at Duquesne University, an extraordinary professor of psychology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and a psychological humanities fellow at Boston College. A scholar and practitioner of psychoanalysis, he is also the co-editor of the Palgrave Lacan Series (with Calum Neill) and the 'Reading Lacan's Ecrits' Series (with Calum Neill and Stijn Vanheule), and the author of Six Moments in Lacan and Fanon, Psychoanalysis and Decolonial Psychology. His co-edited books include Lacan on Melancholia and Depression (with Stijn Vanheule), Lacan and Race (with Sheldon George), and Fanon and Lacan (with Sinan Richards). His YouTube channel (@derekhookonlacan) features 250 videos and lectures on Lacanian psychoanalysis).

Anthony Isacco, PhD, is program director, professor, and head of clinical research in the MS in Clinical Psychology Program at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. He is a licensed psychologist and is the principal of Puritan Psychological Services, a small private practice focused on helping clergy, seminarians, and women religious flourish in their vocations. Dr. Isacco is a generalist, with areas of expertise in the psychology of men and masculinity, clergy mental health, fatherhood, psychological assessment, and religious/spiritual integration in psychology. He has published and presented widely on those topics in academic, ecclesial, and various popular press outlets. He has been featured on the HALLOW app and the Word on Fire Ministries and Institute. He is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville (BA), Boston College (MA), and Loyola University of Chicago (PhD). Dr. Isacco lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and four daughters.

Sarah Kamens, PhD is a clinical psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work examines theories of mental distress, including phenomenological-existential approaches to psychosis and structural violence. Kamens holds an MA in Communication from the European Graduate School (EGS) and an MA/PhD in clinical psychology from Fordham University. She completed predoctoral clinical training at the Yale University School of Medicine with a focus on adult community mental health. Her postdoctoral clinical training took place at the Yale Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) program. Kamens was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Professor at Wesleyan University, and she spent three years as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the SUNY College at Old Westbury. In addition to her work in private practice, Kamens is currently editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Sage Publications). Her book, Reconceptualizing Schizophrenia: The Phenomenology of Urhomelessness (2023) was published in the ISPS book series by Routledge.

Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC is Distinguished James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University. He directs the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital, in Montreal, where he conducts research on culturally responsive mental health services, psychiatric anthropology, and the philosophy of psychiatry. He is the author of Healing and the Invention of Metaphor: Toward a Poetics of Illness Experience and Unraveling the World-Knot: Mind-Body Problems in Clinical Context, as well as the edited volumes, Cultural Consultation: Encountering the Other in Mental Health Care, and Revisioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

Leswin Laubscher is a Professor in Psychology at Duquesne University and an Extraordinary Professor of Psychology at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Author of Levinas for Psychologists (2024) and co-editor (with Derek Hook and Miraj Desai) of Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology (2023), Dr. Laubscher has extensive research, teaching, and clinical experience in both South Africa and the United States.

Kyleigh Leddy is the author of Friends of the Bride (forthcoming: Simon & Schuster), Worse Than Strangers (Simon & Schuster), and The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister (HarperCollins). In 2023, she was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Media list. She is a co-founder and professor in Boston College’s new MA in Writing and the Human Condition program. In 2019, while a senior at Boston College, Kyleigh won The New York Times Modern Love College Essay Contest, marking her start in publishing. Now, as a licensed therapist and author, her academic work centers around the intersection between psychology and writing.

Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. A personality and life-span developmental psychologist, Professor McAdams pioneered the study of narrative identity in the psychological sciences, which refers to the stories people construct to make meaning out of their lives. He has examined themes of power, love, and redemption in the life stories of especially caring and productive American adults in their midlife years. He has also written and published full psychobiographies of US Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Professor McAdams has won numerous awards for his work, including the Henry A. Murray Award for excellence in the study of lives, the Jack Block Award for lifetime contributions to personality psychology, and the William James Book Award for The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By.

Michael J. Miller, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Norton College of Medicine at Upstate Medical University. He is the founder and director of the Center for Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry (CP3) and the CP3 Lab, which brings rigorous theory to high-impact psychological and psychiatric research.

Dr. Miller’s 2011 pioneering book, Lacanian Psychotherapy, was the first to offer detailed case studies in psychotherapy using Jacques Lacan’s texts. His current research focuses on: Psychology’s implicit ethical commitments, the role of identification in ethics and ontology, the moral claims of psychiatric taxonomy, the role of language in psychiatric science, and scientific appropriations of neurodiversity theory.

Dr. Miller’s recent publications appear in several edited volumes as well as Lancet Psychiatry (2026), The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (2026), The Psychiatric Times (2024) and

(2026).

Dr. John Y. Rhee, MD MPH, is a board-certified neurologist, neuro-oncologist, and palliative care specialist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), where he takes care of patients with brain cancer and their palliative care needs and runs a supportive care research program for brain tumor patients. He was formerly Chief Resident of Neurology at Mass General Brigham and received his MD/MPH with Distinctions in Medical Education, Research, and Global Health from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he was a Dean's Scholar in Global Health. He graduated with a B.S. in Policy Analysis with Honors and Distinction from Cornell University. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the HMS Center for Bioethics, Young Member of the Pontifical Academy of Life, Vatican City, and Term Member of the American Academy of Science and Letters. He co-founded the Hippocratic Society and serves as its President.

Kirk Schneider, Ph.D. is a leading spokesperson for existential-humanistic and existential-integrative psychology, an adjunct faculty member at Saybrook University, and formerly at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also a fellow at the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College, cofounder and current president of the award-winning Existential-Humanistic Institute, and a fellow of seven Divisions in the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Schneider is the author/editor of 16 books. These include Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, Existential-Humanistic Therapy (with Orah Krug), Awakening to Awe, The Spirituality of Awe, The Polarized Mind, The Depolarizing of America, Life-Enhancing Anxiety, and his new book The Vibrant Center: A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age. His books have been translated into eight languages and he has been a frequent keynote speaker both nationally and internationally. For more information visit https://kirkjschneider.com as well as his and cofounder Tyler Gamlen's Corps of Depth Healers Certificate Program (corpsofdepthhealers.com). This program provides a free curriculum for those in the helping professions who are interested in applying depth principles of practice to social crises.

Danielle Spencer is a faculty member in the Columbia University Narrative Medicine Graduate Program. Author of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-author of Perkins-Prize-winning The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (OUP, 2017), her scholarly and creative work appears in diverse outlets, from The Lancet to Ploughshares. She is the Editor of the Anthem Studies in Narrative and Health Humanities book series and is an Associate Editor of Literature and Medicine. Her research interests include critical health humanities, narrative ethics, health professions education, and media studies. Formerly artist/musician David Byrne’s Art Director, Spencer holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo. Read more about Danielle here.

Jeff Sugarman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education at Simon Fraser University. Throughout his career, he has championed historical and philosophical approaches to the study of personhood, human agency, the sociopolitical influence of psychology, and the psychology of neoliberalism, among other topics. He has been a strong advocate for the psychological humanities as a means of deepening our understanding of psychology’s subject matter, intellectual foundations, and sociopolitical and ethical implications. He is co-editor of A Humanities Approach to the Psychology of Personhood (Routledge, 2020) and The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), and co-author of Persons: Understanding Psychological Selfhood and Agency (Springer, 2010), Psychology and the Question of Agency (SUNY Press, 2003), and The Psychology of Human Possibility and Constraint (SUNY Press, 1999). He is a former President of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and received the Society’s 2023 Award for Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology.

Thomas Teo is a professor of psychology in the Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology Program at York University, Toronto. His research has been meta-psychological to provide a more reflexive understanding of the foundations, trajectories, and possibilities of human subjectivity within the psychological humanities. He is editor of Theory & Psychology, the Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology, the Encyclopedia of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, as well as co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology. He is Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association and has a research record with more than 300 academic publications, refereed, and invited presentations. He received the Joseph B. Gittler Award for scholarly contributions to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge and the Theodore Sarbin Award. In 2026 he received the Award for Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology (Division 24 of APA).

Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D. is a Professor of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Her research and scholarship focus on immigration, race, trauma, and culturally informed psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She is also a clinical psychologist in Independent Practice. Dr. Tummala-Narra is a Consulting Editor for several journals, including Psychoanalytic Dialogues, the Journal of Counseling Psychology, The Humanistic Psychologist, and the American Psychologist. She is a member of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis (American Psychoanalytic Association). Dr. Tummala-Narra is the author of Psychoanalytic Theory and Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy (2016), the editor of Trauma and Racial Minority Immigrants: Turmoil, Uncertainty, and Resistance (2021), co-author of Applying Multiculturalism: An Ecological Approach to the Multicultural Guidelines (2023), and associate editor of the APA Handbook of Humanistic and Existential Psychology (2026), all published by the American Psychological Association. She is the recipient of numerous recognitions and honors.

Eve Watson (PhD) is a psychoanalytic practitioner and works in training and education in Dublin, Ireland. Clinically trained in the Lacanian tradition, she holds a doctorate in psychoanalytic studies and has published extensively about sexuality, gender identity, film, literature, culture, psychoanalytic clinical practice, and the importance of interdisciplinarity. Her edited book collections are Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory (2017, Punctum), Critical Essays on the Drive: Lacanian Theory and Practice (2024, Routledge), Freud’s Principal Case Studies Revisited: Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysts Reconsider the Legacy (2025, Routledge) and a forthcoming collection, James Joyce’s Writing and Psychoanalysis (2027, Routledge). In 2022, she was the Erikson Scholar-in-Residence at the Austen Riggs Centre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 2025 was the Burns Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College. She is an Assistant Professor in Psychotherapy at Dublin City University, and is the Academic Director of the Freud Lacan institute (FLi).

Liane Young is the Director of the Morality Lab in the Psychology & Neuroscience Department at Boston College. Her lab investigates the psychological processes underlying moral judgment and decision making. Current research areas include: perceptions of public virtue; future-oriented thinking and empathy; the influence of complex social identities on intergroup attitudes; the role of essentialism in attitudes toward marginalized groups; uses for AI in enhancing empathy, understanding, and prosocial action. The Morality Lab uses the tools of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including online surveys, fMRI, and computational methods, to address questions in these areas, and leverages research insights to develop interventions for social change in collaboration with field partners.

Jeronimo Ayesta is a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at Boston College and a Fellow at the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. His dissertation, directed by Richard Kearney, studies the relation between ethics and aesthetics in Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricœur, and asks how encounters with art, film, and narrative form practical wisdom and mediate self-understanding. He also writes on Augustine, Kierkegaard, and the films of Terrence Malick and Éric Rohmer. He has presented his work at the Society for Ricoeur Studies, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association, and the Psychology and the Other Conference, where he received the Forming Persons Student Award in 2023. He teaches Philosophy of the Person, a core course at Boston College, and received the Donald J. White Teaching Award in 2025. He holds an M.A. in Film Studies from King's College London and degrees in Philosophy and Journalism from the University of Navarra.

Patrick Filipe Conway is the Inaugural Ignacio Chair and Director of the Boston College Prison Education Program. He earned his PhD in Education from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. His research and practice focus on the transformative potential of higher education in prison, exploring the intersections of justice, education, and the humanities, with particular attention to policy and media narratives, effective teaching practices, and the lived experiences of incarcerated students. His scholarship has appeared in the Review of Higher Education, the Harvard Educational Review, Higher Education, Educational Policy, and the Journal of College Student Development, among other journals. Through both practice and scholarship, Dr. Conway seeks to advance the field of higher education in prison, actively collaborating with national initiatives including the Bard Prison Initiative, the Jesuit Prison Education Network, Jobs for the Future, and the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. His work emphasizes the role of the humanities in understanding justice, supporting reentry, and shaping educational and societal transformatio

Justin Karter, PhD, is the Acting Program Director of the in-development PsyD in Clinical Psychology at Boston College. He also teaches in the Counseling Psychology PhD program and in the Psychological Humanities undergraduate minor. His work sits at the intersection of clinical psychology, philosophical psychology, and the psychological humanities, with particular interests in theories of psychotherapy, the history and philosophy of diagnosis, critical psychology, and the cultural conditions that shape contemporary experiences of suffering and care.

Dr. Karter has served as President (25-26) of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Division 24 of the American Psychological Association, and received the Division 24 Early Career Award. He writes, edits, and hosts interviews for Mad in America, where his work investigates the fault lines in contemporary mental health discourse. He also maintains an active clinical practice as a licensed psychologist, with a focus on relational-psychodynamic and humanistic-existential psychotherapy.

Emily Kent is a doctoral student in Formative Education at Boston College and a Doctoral Fellow for the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. She also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Programs and Student Affairs at the Woods College of Advancing Studies. Her research focuses on the power of storytelling and the ways literature can illuminate self knowledge, foster connection, and empower individuals to share their own stories. Emily is passionate about the transformative effect education can have on both individuals and their communities, the potential of literature to be educative, and the impact of dialogue around literature. In her spare time, Emily is also an avid reader and an unofficial book collector. 

Harrison Mullen is a PhD Candidate in Formative Education at Boston College, whose research bridges the humanities and human development, exploring how educational experiences contribute to individual and collective flourishing. He is training as a scholar at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and has received awards or fellowships from the Monson Seminar, Yale’s Center for Faith and Culture, the NCAA, and Mary Immaculate College (Ireland). Much of Harrison’s recent work explores the educational dimensions of sports through the lenses of philosophy of education, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. He is particularly interested in the tension between sports as a site for character development and dehumanizing commodification, as well as reimagining the losses athletes suffer in retirement. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University and a B.S. in Biology from St. Lawrence University.