Dr John Loewenthal

John Loewenthal works as the Education and Training Officer for the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). 

In this role, he collaborates with SOAS colleagues to develop socially impactful educational offerings at the intersection of anthropology and mental health. Such outputs include master’s and doctoral education, scholarships, and continuing professional development courses. John is also a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, conducting the project, ‘Anthropology, talking therapy, and education: intersections between theory and practice’. 

Before joining SOAS, John was a Lecturer in Education at Keele University, a Teaching Fellow in Education at The University of Edinburgh, and an Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. He has been a Visiting Scholar at New York University and a Visiting Doctoral Student and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV) (Mexico). John continues to design and teach lifelong learning courses in anthropology at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, where he has been teaching since 2017. He is a Co-Convenor of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (EASA), a Board Member of the Teaching Anthropology Network (EASA), and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

John holds a First Class BA in Archaeology and Anthropology (University of Oxford), an MA in Anthropology and Education, as a Margaret Mead Fellow (Columbia University), and a PhD (Oxford Brookes University, funded Studentship) for a thesis, ‘Aspirations of university graduates: an ethnography in New York and Los Angeles’. The thesis explores the lives and aspirations of a group of young adults from a university in New York City and investigates how their aspirations were produced, negotiated, and revised over time. John is a relational and integrative psychotherapeutic counsellor (MBACP) working with people individually and as couples and families. This ongoing clinical practice informs his current research project, described more below.

Existential and psychological anthropology; counselling and psychotherapy; couples counselling and relational therapy; lifelong learning; existential pedagogy; subjectivity; time, space, and phenomenology; aspirations and pursuits of meaning; work, leisure, and wellbeing. 

Please note that John is unable to act as a supervisor on PhD projects. As CAMHRA’s Education and Training Officer, he can put you in touch with researchers who might be suited to supervise your research on anthropology and mental health. 

As a Research Associate, John is conducting the project, ‘Anthropology, talking therapy, and education: intersections between theory and practice’. The project involves desk-based (theoretical), clinically informed, and autoethnographic reflections on his ongoing therapeutic practice. An overarching hypothesis is that the psychological therapies have much to contribute to anthropological theory, methods, knowledge, and careers. Talking therapy inquires into the human condition by foregrounding human experience and engaging with inner life to a degree that exceeds much (sociocultural) anthropology. The talking therapies also offer a vantage point into the social and cultural as they are lived and experienced. Therapists bear witness to how social relations, identities, structural forces, and aspects of society play out in the privacy of people’s inner and domestic lives. 

Therapeutic conversations address core anthropological themes: gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, ageing, death, temporality, place, migration, bodies, habits, traditions, personhood, friendship, marriage, family, authenticity, understanding, interpretation, emotions, beliefs, aspirations, politics, religion, economic relations, conflict, violence, and communication, among others. Experiences of these human themes are revealed in subjective detail through the openness of private conversation, a desire to be heard, and a search for solace, amelioration, and rectification. Through such continuous exposure to human life, societal happenings, and the cultural and philosophical questions that arise, a therapist has an opportune anthropological perspective.

The research project also explores educational aspects of talking therapy. Therapeutic processes often identify prior socialisations and facilitate novel forms of knowledge about self, others, and how to act in the world. Through autoethnography, the research scrutineses the pedagogy, ethics, risks, and responsibilities of influencing others’ learning and life through therapeutic relationships and interventions. 

A further aim of the project is to develop bridges between anthropological study and therapeutic careers. Psychotherapeutic practice can influence academic anthropology towards a closer encounter with human existence. Meanwhile, practice-based careers as a therapist can become increasingly signposted for anthropology students and graduates.