Rachel Liebert

Dr Rachel Liebert

Senior Research Fellow RL

Senior Research Fellow

Mental Health and Social Change, Institute for Connected Communities, Institute for Connected Communities

Research, Innovation and Enterprise ,

I am currently based in Aotearoa as PI of The Tīpuna Project – an AHRC-funded participatory action research project to experiment with the decolonial possibilities of communing with Indigenous and settler ancestors. I am also co-curating Awry2 - an online, peer-reviewed space for academics to experiment with form as a commitment to decoloniality.

Qualifications

  • PhD
Rachel Liebert

OVERVIEW

In my research, teaching, activism and art I seek to breach the genocidal legacies of my settler and intellectual ancestors. Trained in Psychology, I am committed to interrupting the coloniality of this discipline and experimenting with alternative praxes that join with de-and anti-colonial social movements. I am particularly interested in creative and more-than-human approaches to teaching, research and activism.

Academia.edu

Personal website

CURRENT RESEARCH

The Tipuna (‘Ancestor’) Project (TTP) is Māori and Pākehā (White settler) collaboration based in Aotearoa to innovate and evaluate research practices that include Indigenous and settler ancestors in order to counter (1) the denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing/being, (2) the historically traumatic nature of the research space for Indigenous peoples and (3) low settler accountability, before translating these counter-practices for local and international decolonising initiatives more broadly. Using participatory action research (PAR) as both a methodology and a case study, we are asking overall: What are the decolonial possibilities and complexities of including ancestors as co-researchers in PAR?

Co-designed through three and half years of dialogue with Māori and Pākehā scholars/activists, TTP is shaped by a central value of kaupapa Māori, structured by the vision of Matike Mai (a nationwide Indigenous-led movement), and supported by six Indigenous networks (representing over 5000 Māori). A co-researcher collective of five Indigenous and five non-Indigenous decolonial practitioners and their ancestors will conduct a three year, three-phase project to: (1) Titiro (‘Look’), innovate ancestral research practices through participant observation with three ancestral experts (a Māori matakite, a Gaelic elder and a Somatics practitioner from racial/healing justice movements); (2) Whakarongo (‘Listen’), evaluate these counter-practices through one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous bespoke PAR project; and (3) Kōrero (‘Speak’), translate these for decolonial initiatives more broadly through a seven-day multimedia co-creative laboratory of public experimentation. This partnership of Indigenous and non-Indigenous methods will be grounded in the kaupapa Māori methodology of wānanga and woven with the kaupapa Māori method of whitiwhiti kōrero, ensuring the project itself enacts commitments to Indigenous sovereignty, community accountability and global struggles.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • Liebert, R. J. (2019). Psycurity: Colonialism, Paranoia, and the War on Imagination. Concepts for Critical Psychology Series by I. Parker (Ed.). Routledge: London, New York.

Editing

  • Carlson, T., Lara, A. & Liebert, R. J. (ongoing). Awry2. Section in, Awry: The International Journal of Critical Psychology.

Guest Editing

  • Ashley, C., Billies, M., Lara, A., Liebert, R., Liu, W., & Nishida, A. (Eds, 2017). Affect and Subjectivity. Subjectivity Special Issue.
  • Liebert, R., & Thompson, L. (Eds, 2015). ‘‘Young Feminists” Doing Recognition & Reflexivity & (R)evolution. Feminism & Psychology Special Feature, 25(1).

Peer-reviewed articles

  • Liebert, R. J. (2021). What could the White body do for decolonising Psychology? 31 questions. (With published responses by Carl Mika and Tim McCreanor). Awry: The International Journal of Critical Psychology, 2(1): 99-123.
  • Liebert, R. J., Lara, A. & Carlson, T. (2021). Awry2: Making space for experimenting with form. Awry: The International Journal of Critical Psychology, 2(1): 77-82.
  • McGrath L., Laver K., Liebert, R., et al. (2021). “You don’t take things too seriously or un-seriously”: Beyond recovery to liminal and liminoid possibility in a community arts and mental health project. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 32(4): 653.
  • McGrath, L, Mighetto, I., Liebert, R., et al. (2021). Stuck in separation: Graffiti arts, liminality and the forensic psychiatric institution as a failed rite of passage. Sociology of Health & Illness, 43(6): 1355.
  • Lara, A., Liu, W., Ashley, C., Nishida, A., Liebert, R., & Billies, M. (2017). Affect and subjectivity. Subjectivity, 10: 30-43. • Liebert, R. J. (2017). Beside-the-mind: An unsettling, reparative reading of paranoia. Subjectivity, 10(1): 123-145.
  • Liebert, R. (2017). Radical archiving as social psychology from the future. Qualitative Psychology Special Issue, The Archive, 4: 90.
  • Liebert, R. & Thompson, L. (2015). Recognition & reflexivity: Editorial introduction to the Special Feature. Feminism & Psychology Special Feature, 25(1): 3-10.
  • Liebert, R. & Thompson, L. (2015). Reflexivity & (r)evolution: Editorial reflections on the Special Feature. Feminism & Psychology Special Feature, 25(1): 95-100.
  • Liebert, R. (2013). A re-view of ambivalence in Bipolar Disorder research. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 15(3): 180-194.
  • Liebert, R. (2013). Loopy: The political ontology of Bipolar Disorder. Aporia, 5(3): 15-25.
  • Liebert, R. (2013). A progressive downward spiral: The circulation of risk in ‘bipolar disorder’. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33(3): 185-198.
  • Liebert, R., Leve, M., & Hui, A. (2011). The politics and possibilities of activism in contemporary feminist psychologies. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(4): 697-704.
  • Liebert, R. (2010). Synaptic peace-keeping: Of bipolar and securitization. Women’s Studies Quarterly Special Issue, Market, 38(3&4): 325-342.
  • Liebert, R. (2010). Feminist psychology, hormones and the raging politics of medicalisation. Feminism & Psychology, 20(2): 278-283.
  • Liebert, R. & Gavey, N. (2009). “There’s always two sides to these things”: Managing the dilemmas of serious adverse effects from SSRI use. Social Science and Medicine, 68(10): 1882-1891.
  • Liebert, R. & Gavey, N. (2008). “I didn’t just cross a line I tripped over an edge”: Personal accounts of SSRI-induced suicidality and/or aggression. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 37(1).
  • Liebert, R. & Gavey, N. (2006). “They took my depression and then medicated me into madness”: Co-constructed narratives of SSRI-induced suicidality. Radical Psychology, 5.

Book chapters

  • Liebert, R.J. (2020). Re-turning the psykhe: A creative experiment in decolonizing psychology. Chapter in M. Brown (Ed.), Emancipatory Perspectives on Madness.Routledge: New York.
  • Taylor, S., Hall, M., Lehman, J., Liebert, R., Nishida, A., & Stewart, J. (2016). Krips, cops and Occupy: Reflections from Oscar Grant Plaza. Chapter in P. Block, D. Kasnitz, A. Nishida, & N. Pollard (Eds.), Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability. Springer: Netherlands.
  • Liebert, R. (2014). Psy policing: The borderlands of psychiatry and security. Chapter in D. Holmes, J. D. Jacob, & A. Perron (Eds.), Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus: Repression, Transformation and Assistance. Ashgate: Farnham, Surrey, United Kingdom.
  • Liebert, R. (2014). Pathologization. Entry in T. Teo (Ed), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer.

Reviews

  • Liebert, R. J. (2021). “To complain is to admit the truth of violence. To complain is to let the ghosts in. To be haunted is to be hit by an inheritance”. A review of Sara Ahmed’s ‘Complaint!’. Polyphony: Durham University.
  • Liebert, R. J. (2020). Infrastructural whiteness and the White body, and a book for my dad? A review of Jonathan Metzl’s ‘Dying of Whiteness’. Polyphony: Durham University.
  • Liebert, R. J. (2020). Of agitation, the erotic, coffee beans and mannequins: A review of Sunil Bhatia’s ‘Decolonizing Psychology’. Feminism & Psychology Special Issue, Feminisms and Decolonising Psychology, 30(3): 415-422.

FUNDING

PI, The Tīpuna Project: Intergenerational Healing, Settler Accountability and Decolonising Participatory Action Research in Aotearoa. UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, 340,000GBP, 2023-2026.