Charlotte Wilcox

Supervisory Interests

I am interested in supervising students in any of the following areas:

• mental health, counselling and psychotherapy
• relational approaches to distress and psychotherapeutic interventions, trauma-sensitive mental health provision  
• critical perspectives on mental health provision (both formal and informal) for LGBTQIA+ and other marginalised/underrepresented groups
• informal mental health support, including peer relationships, peer support and/or friendships
• social/community approaches to mental health and well-being

Projects might use creative visual methods or qualitative methods.

Scholarly biography

I teach on a range of modules with a focus on both applied and counselling psychology, mood and anxiety disorders, critical approaches to mental health and psychiatry, and the use of qualitative methods.

My research since arriving at HASS has focused on using qualitative methods to explore radical informal peer mental health support in a local Brighton LGBTQIA+ community. Working collaboratively with psychology colleagues at HASS this project is now oriented towards dissemination to the community and wider stakeholders in mental health in the city.  

Currently, I am completing a research study which will be submitted for the BPS/HCPC doctoral award in Counselling Psychology. This phenomenological study explores the experiences of Queer identified psychotherapists in their clinical practice. This hybrid IPA design includes a creative haptic method, in which participants have been invited to ‘doodle with clay’. This broader than usual dataset significantly expands the scope of the interpretive analysis.  

I am an integrative psychotherapist in general private practice and see adult clients for a range of emotional and psychological issues. My practice integrates relational psychoanalytic, attachment and humanistic principles and is both body-aware and trauma-informed.

Before beginning clinical training in psychotherapy I worked for the NHS in applied psychology research and in clinical roles in community psychiatry. I have also held a number of roles in journalism and media, in investigative journalism and broadcasting as well as community and participatory media. 

Research interests

I primarily use qualitative methods, including descriptive and interpretive phenomenological analysis, thematic analysis, and creative methods.

I situate myself as a critical community and counselling psychologist, with a particular interest in lived experience. As an integrative psychotherapist I am interested in the intersubjective-as-praxis for the relational healing of distress. I explore sense-making, including narrative, metaphor and the imaginal, as means of processing difficult life and existential experiences including traumatic stress. My clinical research interests are in the possibilities of innovative ways of sharing human connection and vulnerability in promoting psychological resilience and emotional health at a social and community level, as well as within the individual.

Affiliations:

The University of Brighton’s Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender: CTSG)

 Education

Professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Integrative Psychotherapy, Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University

MA Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies

BA Modern History, University of Oxford