Meet The Team

Professor Matthew Broome

Professor Matthew Broome is Leader of the Renewing of Phenomenological Psychopathology Project. He is Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, and Visiting Professor, Suor Orsola Benicasa University of Naples.  

Matthew studied Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of Birmingham and trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.  Matthew has a PhD in Psychiatry from the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, and in Philosophy from the University of Warwick. He is series editor to the OUP series, International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry and deputy editor of The British Journal of Psychiatry.  He co-edited Risk Factors for Psychosis: Paradigms, Mechanisms, and Prevention. (Elsevier Press, 2020), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, (Oxford University Press, 2019), The AMDP System: Manual for Assessment and Documentation of Psychopathology in Psychiatry, (Hogrefe. 2017), The Maudsley Reader in Phenomenological Psychiatry (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives, (Oxford University Press, 2009). 

Matthew’s research interests include youth mental health, the prodromal phase of psychosis, early intervention in psychosis, delusion formation, mood instability, neurodevelopmental disorders, functional neuroimaging, interdisciplinary methods, mental health humanities, and the philosophy of psychiatry. His research is funded by the Wellcome Trust, NIH, MRC, NIHR, and the Wolfson Foundation.

Professor Giovanni Stanghellini 

Professor Stanghellini is Leader of the Renewing of Phenomenological Psychopathology Project. He is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopathology at University of Florence (Italy), Dr. Phil. honoris causa, and profesor adjuncto at ‘D. Portales’ University in Santiago (Chile). He chairs the Scuola di Psicoterapia Fenomenologico-Dinamica in Florence (Italy), a four-year training program for post-graduate medical doctors and psychologists who want to specialize in phenomenological-dynamic psychotherapy. He founded with KWM Fulford and JZ Sadler the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry and the Oxford University Press Series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry.

His research builds on and extends classic studies in clinical phenomenology and focuses on the understanding of the life-worlds inhabited by people affected by severe mental disorders like schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorders, investigating with empirical qualitative methods the way they experience time, space, their own body and other people. Recently, integrating clinical phenomenology with cultural studies and the work of authors like Georges Bataille and Walter Benjamin, he has been working on the “psychopathology of the present”, formulating phenomenological hypotheses about narcissistic and borderline conditions and so called “eating disorders”. He also developed the “PHD” psychotherapy method, an integrative approach based on phenomenology (P), hermeneutics (H) and psychodynamics (D). It combines concepts of the life-world with a dialectical view of psychopathology – which envisions the formation of symptoms as the outcome of the dynamics between the person and her vulnerability – and with the dialogical principle of human existence.

Among his books, the Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology (leading editor), the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (co-editor), Disembodied spirits and Deanimated Bodies. The psychopathology of common sense, Emotions and personhood. Emotions and personhood: Exploring fragility – making sense of vulnerability (with R. Rosfort), One century of Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology (edited with T. Fuchs) and Lost in Dialogue, Lost in dialogue. Anthropology, psychopathology and care - all published by Oxford University Press. Another book, The Therapeutic Interview in Mental Health: A Values-based and Person-centered Approach, for the Cambridge University Press series on Values-based Medicine, illustrates the key role of phenomenology in values-based psychiatric interview.

Dr Lucienne Spencer   

Lucienne Spencer is a Wellcome Trust funded postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, a Research Fellow of the Renewing of Phenomenological Psychopathology Project. Her research interests include phenomenology, epistemic injustice, and the philosophy of psychiatry. She completed her SWW-DTP funded PhD at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Havi Carel and Dr Lisa El Refaie. Her PhD thesis was entitled 'Breaking the Silence: A Phenomenological Account of Epistemic Injustice and its role in Psychiatry', for which she received no corrections. She is also a member of the executive committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK. Her website is https://luciennespencer.com. 

Her recent publications include:

• Spencer, L.J & Kidd, I.J. (forthcoming) ‘The Hermeneutic Problem of Psychiatry and the Co-production of Meaning in Psychiatric Healthcare’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 94, Cambridge University Press.
• Kidd, I.J, Spencer, L.J & Harris, E. (2023) Epistemic injustice should matter to psychiatrists, Philosophy of Medicine. 4(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2023.159.
• Spencer, L.J & Broome, M. (2023) Closing the gender gap in depression through the lived experience of young women – a response to ‘Don't mind the gap: Why do we not care about the gender gap in mental health?’, Patalay and Demkowicz (2023), Child and Adolescent Mental Health.DOI: 10.1111/camh.12649. 
• Spencer, L.J. (2023) Hermeneutical Injustice and Unworlding in Psychopathology, Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2023.2166821
• Kidd, I.J, Spencer, L.J & Carel, H. (2022) Epistemic Injustice in Psychiatric Research and Practice, Philosophical Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2022.2156333
• Spencer, L. (2022) ‘Epistemic Injustice in Late-Stage Dementia: A Case for Non-Verbal Testimonial Injustice’ Social Epistemology, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2022.2103474
• Spencer, L. & Carel, H. (2021) “Isn’t everyone a little OCD?’: the epistemic harm of wrongful depathologisation” Philosophy of Medicine. DOI: 10.5195/philmed.2021.19