Keynotes

Robert Lemelson, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology UCLA. Lemelson is a cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and philanthropist. He has conducted visual psychological anthropology research in Indonesia for over 25 years. As the founder of Elemental Productions, the 2020 Recipient of a "New Directions Award" from the General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association, he has directed and produced over fifteen ethnographic films on a range of topics, including mental illness and genocide. He is also the recipient of a 2017 "Creative Scholarship Award" from the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture for his significant creative contribution to the field. He is the co-author of Afflictions: Steps Towards a Visual Psychological Anthropology and Widening the Frame with Visual Psychological Anthropology: Perspectives on Trauma, Gendered Violence, and Stigma in Indonesia. View his work at elementalproductions.org.

Byron J. Good, PhD, is Professor of Medical Anthropology, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.
Prof. Good has a long trajectory of work on theorizing psychological anthropology, on culture and mental illness, subjectivity, and haunting/hauntology. Since 1996, he has been collaborating with colleagues in Indonesia in both basic and action research focused on early psychosis and mental health services, particularly in Yogyakarta, and on post conflict mental health care in Aceh. Prof. Good delivered the 2000 Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures and Oxford University’s 2010 Marett Lecture. He was President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2013-2015 and was awarded the SPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. 

Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good (not present in-person), PhD, is Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine Emerita, Harvard Medical School and the Department of Sociology, Harvard University.
Prof. Good conducts comparative work on ‘medicine’s modernist projects,’ the rise of biotechnologies, end of life care, and global bioethics. Her long interest in political subjectivity has included work with Indonesian artists and women’s response to traumatic violence in post-conflict Aceh. Prof. Good is recipient of the 2019 William Silen Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Profs. Mary-Jo and Byron Good edited the journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1986-2004. 

Charissa S. L. Cheah, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and President of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
A cultural developmental scientist, her research seeks to understand how individual, relational, and contextual factors shape the development of youth and their families across different cultural contexts. Prof. Cheah employs mixed-method, longitudinal, and cross-cultural approaches to illuminate risk and resilience processes. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, and her research has been recognized by a Fulbright Research Fellowship and the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award in Scholarship or Research. 

James Davies, Ph.D., obtained his PhD in Social & Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2007. He is now Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Roehampton, London.
He is also a practicing psychotherapist, having worked clinically in various settings, including the NHS. He is co-founder of the Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group, Westminster, UK, and has been an advisor to the UK Government & Public Health England. He is author of numerous books including the bestselling: Sedated: how modern capitalism caused our mental health crisis (Atlantic 2022), and Cracked: the unhappy truth about psychiatry (Icon 2014). He also co-edited 'Emotions in the Field: the psychology and anthropology of fieldwork experience' (Stanford Uni Press 2011), and is a founding member of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (ENPA).

Rupert Cox, PhD, is the Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester. He received his MA and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh. His work engages at the intersections between art and science and anthropology and innovative forms of public engagement. He currently works on the anthropology of sound, investigating questions about the politics of noise from perspectives of acoustic science, sound studies, and sound art. He has written books on the idea of the Zen Arts, Copying Culture and Material Heritage in Japan for Routledge Press, and about forms of representation that lie ‘Beyond Text’ in anthropology for Manchester University Press and Wiley Press.