About

My PhD art therapy research investigates symbolic aesthetic representations of the self in the form of the house. An auxiliary question is if visual indications of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms would become apparent in participants' house-related aesthetic works.

The qualitative phenomenological study covers several cultural contexts (Japan, Europe and Taiwan), incorporating fieldwork with several cohorts composed of art therapy patients, artists or architects.

I am interested in how and why house-related phenomena show themselves via visual, aesthetic and narrative forms by taking the cultural specificities into account. The question is to what extent these manifestations are grounded within a particular cultural context, and how much overlap there is between cultures.

I started my PhD in 2015 and am currently in the process of analysing the gathered material and writing my thesis.

Thesis title 

The house as symbolic representation of the self

Supervisor/s

• Professor Susan Hogan
• Dr Ruth Larsen

Qualifications

• MSc Mental Health, Psychological Therapies, Queen Mary University of London