PEOPLE

Raluca Soreanu is Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex and psychoanalyst, member of the Círculo Psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro. Her work sits at the intersection of psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis, social theory and medical humanities. Raluca has a particular interest in the social, political and cultural applications of psychoanalysis. She has a long-standing investment in the revival of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis (and thinkers such as Sándor Ferenczi and Michael Balint). She is the author of Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave, 2018) and the co-author, with Jenny Willner and Jakob Staberg of Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe (Leuven University Press, 2023). Written in an experimental dialogical form, this book situates the legacy of Ferenczi within a broad interdisciplinary landscape – including social sciences, literary theory, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical practice. At present, Raluca is working on a theoretical-clinical monograph, The Psychic Life of Fragments. On Splitting and the Experience of Time in Psychoanalysis. Drawing on work in the Michael Balint Archive, held by British Psychoanalytical Society (as Wellcome Trust Fellow in Medical Humanities), she is also working on the monograph Thinking in Dyads: On Michael Balint and Countertransference. Raluca is the project lead of FREEPSY. She is an Academic Associate of the Freud Museum London and Editor of the Studies in the Psychosocial series at Palgrave. 

Ana Tomcic is a cultural historian and literary scholar. She completed her PhD at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include the history of psychoanalysis, twentieth-century literature, gender and sexuality, and the role of class in psychoanalytic contexts. Ana previously worked on ideas of progress in psychoanalysis and modernist literature and film and is currently writing a book entitled Rethinking Progress: Psychoanalysis, Modernism and Queer Development. She has also published on the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein, particularly the later phase of her work. Her current research focuses on psychoanalytic approaches to juvenile delinquency and the intersections between psychoanalysis and education before and after World War II. This is also related to her work on the FREEPSY project, where she is involved with the strand ‘The Legacies of the Free Clinics’, looking to trace the international networks and initiatives of analysts that originated from the first free clinics in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest in the 1920s. In the UK and her native Croatia, Ana has also worked as a teacher with various age groups for over ten years and has taken part in numerous widening participation projects. She is a firm believer in a compassionate and relationship-based education that is accessible to everyone.

Ana Minozzo is a practicing psychoanalyst and researcher based in London, originally from Brazil. She has gained a PhD in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London in 2021, following an MA also in Psychosocial Studies at the same institution. Prior to arriving at Essex as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychosocial Studies at FREEPSY, Ana has lectured in cultural studies and creative practices at the University of the Arts London from 2013-2021. Alongside her private clinical practice, Ana is part of the Psychosis Therapy Project, in London, and has experience with a number of community services mainly in relation to psychosis, gender and sexuality and migration. As a FREEPSY Postdoctoral Researcher, Ana is mainly engaged in thinking about ‘Witnessing as a Paradigm for Society’ through a series of psychosocial ethnographic field-work studies being conducted in Brazil and Argentina throughout the duration of the project. Engaging with local collectives, interviewing psychoanalysts and in dialogue with researchers and activists, the research interests Ana brings to the field are in medical humanities, feminist praxis in the field of psy, posthuman and ecofeminism as well as in the philosophy of psychoanalysis.

Lizaveta is a clinician and academic with a long-standing interest in research in psychoanalytic theory and history. Her thesis was dedicated to the vicissitudes of psychoanalysis in Soviet times, 1930-1980. Previously she studied and worked in Belarus and Russia, and holds degrees in clinical psychology and psychotherapy. For many years she was engaged as a curator of Freud’s Dreams Museum in Saint-Petersburg and was an editor of the online psychoanalytical journal Lacanalia dedicated to Freudian and Lacanian thought. She holds an MA and PhD from Birkbeck, University of London, where she teaches as an Associate Lecturer in Graduate Course in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy. In the FREEPSY Lizaveta is involved in ‘The Legacies of the Free Clinics’ strand, conducting archival and psychosocial research on free clinics in Vienna and Budapest.

Ivan Ward is the former Deputy Director, Head of Learning and manager of the public conference programme at the Freud Museum London, where he worked for 33 years. Born in Hackney, London, in the mid-1950s, he is a mixed-race father of two girls and author of a number of books and papers on psychoanalytic theory and the applications of psychoanalysis to social and cultural issues. His latest publication is ‘Everyday Racism: Psychological Effects’ in The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter edited by Beverly J. Stoute and Michael Slevin (Routledge, 2022). He is an honorary research fellow at UCL Psychoanalysis Unit. He is the Communications and Events Officer at FREEPSY. 

Julianna Pusztai is a psychodynamic psychotherapist and a psychosocial thinker. She holds an MSc in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Counselling and a BA in Psychosocial Studies from Birkbeck, University of London. Her dissertation was a study on the essence of internal and external cultural objects in one’s life, inside and outside of the consulting room. She has a professional background in social care and mental health, where she worked in community mental health settings, higher education, primary and secondary care in the last decade. She is a psychotherapist in private practice seeing clients in English and her native language Hungarian; with an interest in immigration, psychosexual difficulties, creativity, belonging and cultural identities.

As a FREEPSY doctoral candidate at the University of Essex, she engages with the strand ‘Progressive Clinical Cultures and Contemporary Practices’ with a psychosocial ethnographic work in the UK. Julianna brings to the project her experience and thoughts on psychoanalysis as a social mission while revisiting the relationship between marginalised groups and psychoanalytic clinics. She has a particular curiosity about the Hungarian psychoanalytic heritage in parallel with the current constitutional resistance to space for listening, mourning, and thinking.

Ewan is an archivist and holds an MSc in Information Management for the Cultural Sector from City, University of London, awarded in 2012. His research focused on archive futures and the future of memory.

As archivist for the British Psychoanalytical Society in London he manages the Society’s archive collections and provides access for visiting researchers, academics and students from across the globe. Ewan is currently cataloguing the papers of Hungarian psychoanalyst Michael Balint and has recently completed work to renegotiate archival image rights for the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by Mark Solms. He has contributed to the curation and production of archival exhibitions including The Enigma of the Hour: 100 years of Psychoanalytic Thought, celebrating the centenary of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the international conference The Balints and Their World – Object Relations and Beyond, both at Freud Museum London.

Working previously at the BBC Archive in various roles including archive development, media management and archive preservation, he contributed to major projects, acting as the archive link for the joint BBC & Arts Council England digital media project The Space and also providing in-depth archival research for the V&A’s 2013 ‘David Bowie Is…’ touring exhibition. 

Ewan is also currently the archivist for the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the European Psychoanalytical Federation / Fédération Européenne de Psychanalyse, based in Brussels.

Sarah was born in England but grew up in many different countries. She has worked on various projects since 2012 both locally and internationally. Sarah has recently completed her studies in Project Management and divides her professional time across the FREEPSY project and an HEE Simulation Project. Sarah loves to combine organisation with travel and last year she organised a backpacking tour around Europe with her family. She has a degree in Sociology and 19th Century Literature and would like to study marketing within the next year.