Episode 10 - Deanne Bell

Deanne is a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, previously lecturing in community psychology at the University of East London. Deanne poetically describes her journey into community psychology, entering a doctoral programme that combined community, liberaton and ecopsychology. She remembers being blown away reading Frantz Fanon, a black philosopher and psychoanalyst from the global south. This opened her mind to the way that the social world effects people psychologically.

Deanne sees community psychology as a theoretical framework that allows us to bring psychological insight to decolonising the world, breaking the hierarchies produced through racism, classism, heteronormativity, ableism, ageism.

She shares her understanding of participatory action research as a democratic process of knowledge seeking, crucially about transformation. Deanne references the importance of Orlando Fals Borda’s work in the field of PAR.

Deanne talks about her work in Jamaica in 2010 where she collaborated on a platform for people affected by a human rights atrocity to be able to tell their story through a film and an art installation.

Deanne is about to start a project called Transforming Inequalities at Nottingham Trent University where she hopes people will start to name and engage with decoloniality. She reflects on decolonising the curriculum, a movement that emerged in South Africa where students pushed back against classism and the need for decolonisation to be a democratic process.

Deanne explains that liberation psychology is unapologetic about naming oppression as the experience of the majority world. Referencing Ignacio Martin Baro and his emphasis on prioritising the poor, she reflects on a middle class bias in psychology and the need to turn our energy to those who are oppressed.

Deanne talks about collective trauma in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. She reflects on the idea of psychosocial accompaniment and Mary Watkins book on mutual accompaniment for those working in human services. Deanne thinks we’ve actually been living in an anxiety and depression pandemic for some time despite psychotropic and psychotherapeutic attempts to respond to this, highlighting a different approach needed.

Deanne talks about the need to run towards coloniality and reduce pervasive bystanding. Deanne suggests those starting out in their exploration of these ideas “go south” and read the writings of those who first wrote about these ideas such as Paulo Friere, Orlando Fals Border and Maritza Montera. Deanne says the global south is a pivot point for community psychology and we should not start with diluted readings from the global north. She discusses the need to create spaces in organisations such as the NHS for meaningful dialogue remembering trust takes time.

Deanne reflects on some critiques of community psychology in that it has lost contact with psychological worlds and the fact that many people need support to articulate their inner worlds. She closes discussing the idea that we cannot empower each other, that the task is rather reshaping the world to remove the blocks to peoples lives, structurally, systemically and in policies.

Deanne’s PAR project work in Jamaica: https://www.tivolistories.com. See this link for a trailer https://www.tivolistories.com/four-days-in-may.html

Mary Watkins book on psychosocial accompaniment: https://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?k=9780300236149