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Inaugural Lecture

Identities, Relationality and the Psychosocial: Different Journeys to the Same Place?

Prof. Brenda Gourley, Professor Margie Wetherell, Professor Ann Phoenix, Professor Wendy Hollway, Professor Stephen Frosh
This event took place on 2nd March 2005
Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall Campus, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Identities, Relationality and the Psychosocial: Different Journeys to the Same Place? This joint inaugural is in recognition of the similarities, as well as differences, in the paths that we three professors have taken in our careers as psychologists, culminating in our close working connections at the Open University for the past four years. When we trained in psychology, it was still a discipline that identified itself only as a science, with the limitations that this imposed with regard to subject and method. Each of us has tried to forge an understanding of people situated in the complexities of the contemporary world that they inhabit. We have all been influenced by wider trends in intellectual life, particularly in the social sciences, which emphasise the importance of language and communication in defining individuals, the struggle to establish identities in an increasingly open-ended, consumerised and individualised world and the power relations between groups based on major social differences such as class, gender and race. We have all turned to and developed methods that strive to capture the complexity of selves, identities and relationships. We all want to recognise the fundamental ways in which aspects of the social world - relationships, language and meaning, institutional structures and values - construct the psychology of persons and at the same time we want to understand the uniqueness and capacity for agency and creativity of individuals.

Programme
In the first half of the inaugural event, each Professor will take 15 minutes to examine aspects of what it means to take a psychosocial approach to understanding identities and in the process the different emphases, as well as what each of the approaches have in common, will become apparent. In the second half of the programme, after a half hour refreshment break, they will each provide a more detailed illustration of what is particular about their research interests and writing. The event will be introduced by the Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, Professor Brenda Gourley, and closed with a few words by Professor Stephen Frosh, Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Research, Birkbeck College, University of London.

3.00 - 3.30 Tea on arrival
3.30 - 3.40 Introduction from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gourley
3.40 - 3.55 Introduction from all three Professors
3.55 - 4.10 Relationality, Professor Wetherell
4.10 - 4.25 Identities, Professor Phoenix
4.25 - 4.40 Subjectivity, Professor Hollway
Break
5.10 - 5.25 The Discursive Turn, Professor Wetherell
5.25 - 5.40 Everyday Life and Social Policy, Professor Phoenix
5.40 - 5.55 Becoming a Mother and the Capacity to Care, Professor Hollway
5.55 - 6.05 Concluding Commentary, Professor Stephen Frosh, Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Research, Birkbeck College

The replay of this event is in two parts. Please select either the 3:30pm or the 5:10 session
3:30 pm Inaugural Lecture
   Prof. Brenda Gourley

   Professor Margie Wetherell

   Professor Ann Phoenix

   Professor Wendy Hollway

   Professor Stephen Frosh Identities, Relationality and the Psychosocial: Different Journeys to the Same Place?
5:10 pm Inaugural Lecture
   Prof. Brenda Gourley

   Professor Margie Wetherell

   Professor Ann Phoenix

   Professor Wendy Hollway

   Professor Stephen Frosh Identities, Relationality and the Psychosocial: Different Journeys to the Same Place?