Dee Black
Contact details
- Email: s2608500@ed.ac.uk
Background
I graduated from the University of Arizona with honours in psychology and philosophy, and have more recently realised that I have always been doing philosophy. I bring my personal experience with gaslighting, being a mental health patient as well as a behavioural health’ worker, a low-income single mum, an artist, an animist and sorceror, a queer (asexual, aromantic, non-binary) and biracial (Japanese-American and of British descent) person and —everything else—to my work. My research is my life, my life is research; it is all my work—which is also play. My work, which I think of as a sort of auto-philosophy, and auto-shamanism, is un-entangle-able from my spiritual, ethical, aesthetic and wellness practices, my politics, my embodied need, and my enjoyment of life. I am continually compelled to ‘zoom out’ to focus on ‘the big picture’, toward becoming monster and becoming fugitive. I have extensive experience in working with shame in my own therapy (and life) and with inner child work, and a specific approach to parenting when it comes to these ideas, and am currently developing a project on shame and parenting to be co-authored with my adult son. In addition to my PhD, I am pursuing my passion for acting, and I continue to dabble in poetry, music and herbalism. I am developing a new interest in traditional storytelling.
CV
158466.pdf
Qualifications
BA Hon Psychology, Hon Philosophy
Behavioral Health Tech
Responsibilities & affiliations
Postgraduate Research Representative, Counselling Studies, School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh
Affiliate, Center for Creative~Relational Inquiry (CCRI)
Postgraduate teaching
Tutor, Between Counselling and Research 1
Research summary
Theoretical, philosophical, and spiritual approaches counselling research and practice. Post-qualitative inquiry; post-humanism; animism and Paganism. Power and shame. Post-humanist and eco-feminist theory; meme theory and affect theory; decoloniality; storytelling.
Current research interests
My PhD in counselling studies is on gaslighting from an animist perspective, using broadly post-qualitative, creative~relational and auto-graphic methodologies. I conceive of shame as a self-interested agent akin to a parasite, and also conceivable as meme, and a discourse. I aim to innovate though thinking toward an animist ethics, developing what I call auto-philosophy, and practicing ‘precipitation’ having started with diffraction. I’m interested in research as sorcery; re-enchantment; ethics and aesthetics; ab-therapy; ab-epistemology; I am currently thinking a lot with Deluze and Guatari.Past research interests
Developing a theory of transactional interpersonal shame; shame and power; phenomenology, intersubjectivity and shame; theoretical and philosophical psychology.Affiliated research centres
Conference details
Game Changer (accepted) Getting Under Toxic Positivity: An Animist approach to ethics. European Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, January 8-10, 2025, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Individual Paper Presentation (accepted), Hope, Wishing on Stars and Rainbow Connections: Songs that sing my mother and me. European Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, January 8-10, 2025, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Participant
Philosophy and Psychiatry: Mind, Value and Mental Health International Summer School and Conference, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, August, 2019.
Papers delivered
Individual Paper Presentation, Tales from the Tails: Outlier Participation and a Reimagining ‘Aggregate Man’: an autoethnographic creative reimagining. European Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, January 9-12, 2024, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Individual Paper Presentation, Toward a Shame-As-Meme Theory: Re-imagining beyond disciplinary and ontological divides. European Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, January 9-12, 2024, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Poster Presentation, Toward an Ecological Perspective on Power, Gender, and Time. Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention, February 13, 2021 (virtual).