academic bio
Helen Barcham is a sociologist at Western Sydney University, researching and writing about the socio-political dimensions of women’s health and wellbeing. She leads, ‘Women Doing Well’, a research project funded through a competitive Vice-Chancellor’s Gender Equality Fund, and is Co-Editor of Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. She regularly delivers public talks, lectures and media commentary on gender and its intersection with health and politics, including internationally in London, Lisbon, Hamburg, Vienna and beyond. Much to her supervisor’s relief, she is in the final year of her PhD. Her dissertation, entitled, ‘Beyond the “Docile Subject”: Women, Therapy Culture and Emerging Gender Subjectivities’, is an empirically-driven investigation into how Australian women – across intersections of race and class – experience the social and psychic dimensions of therapy culture. Critically, her research asks, what women ‘do’ with therapeutic knowledges and experiences in the context of their relationship with self and others?
To learn more about Helen's work, please click here.