Lisa's collaborative project, The brain and the mind, was based in the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King's. The Centre, now part of the Arts & Humanities Research Institute (AHRI) at King's, is directed by Professor Brian Hurwitz and Dr Neil Vickers and has previously been funded by a Wellcome Strategic Award. It aims to establish a world leader in research in the Medical Humanities through a multistranded programme of research on The boundaries of illness.
Lisa's project in the Centre was a collaboration with Dr Lara Feigel, Reader in Modern Literature in the Department of English. Together, Lisa and Lara organised six panel discussions exploring the mind/brain conundrum from interdisciplinary perspectives. These were focused on the topics of free will, evolution, gender, empathy, autism and memory. More information about each panel is available below and on The brain and the mind website. All the filming for the project was done by Poppy Sebag-Montefiore.
About the residency, Lisa wrote 'I have thoroughly enjoyed working with my talented and imaginative colleagues in the King’s English Department and the Centre for the Humanities and Health. The project had an invigorating cross-disciplinary thrust which challenged the thinking of any individual participant in a given field and proved illuminating for the audience of students and public. It now has an ongoing virtual life, thanks to the excellent filming of Poppy Sebag-Montefiore. Accompanying additional workshops with graduate students were also very fruitful.'
Lisa Appignanesi OBE is a prize-winning writer, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commentator. Currently a visiting professor at King's and chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she is former president of the campaigning writers association, English PEN, and chair of London’s Freud Museum.
As deputy president of English PEN, and then its president, (2002-2011) she led the Free expression is no offence campaign against the Incitement to Religious Hatred llegislation, and campaigned for an end to the Blasphemy Laws and reform to the visa system and libel laws. She also helped to establish the PEN PINTER PRIZE for writers of courage in Britain and abroad; and worked to site Antony Gormley’s commemorative WITNESS chair in the British Library Plaza.
Her award-winning Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present appeared to great critical acclaim, and was followed by the provocative All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion. Her book Trials of Passion: In the Name of Love and Madness again delves into the history of psychiatry, investigating the rise of the expert psychiatric witness through remarkable trials of passion.
Lisa received her OBE for services to literature.
First panel: The brain, free will and the inner life
18 October 2012
In the first panel of the series convened and chaired by Lisa, Neuroscientist Patrick Haggard presented a short film on his research on involuntary action and how we make choices. Patrick discussed this with Cambridge philosopher of mind, Tim Crane, playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, and director Declan Donnellan. Simon McBurney, founder of the famous Complicité theatre participates on film.
The discussion was part of the 2012 Arts & Humanities Festival at King's titled Metamorphoses: transformations and conversions in the arts and humanities.
Second panel: Darwin, biology and the brain's order and disorders
22 November 2012
The second of the panel series, chaired by philosopher David Papineau, of the King's Centre for the Humanities and Health, posed the question 'how seriously should we take Darwinian hypotheses in formulating ideas about the mind?' The old nature-nurture arguments have gained added heft and new twists with our sophisticated brain-mapping and genetic technologies. Scientists have argued that early childhood environments help to shape and create the infant brain and resulting disorders may have more to do with environmental triggers than with biological inheritance. Anthony David, Professor of Psychiatry at King's probed the disordered mind with Professor Peter Hobson, author of The Cradle of Thought and prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt.
Third panel: The workings of empathy
4 December 2012
The third in the panel series explored neuroscientific work on ‘mirror neurones'. It has been shown that patients suffering certain kinds of brain damage are unable to experience particular emotions in themselves or to recognize them in others. Psychoanalyst Darian Leader, actor Fiona Shaw and Neuroscientist Chris Frith discuss what it means to engage with the mind of another person. The discussion was led by Dr Lara Feigel.
Fourth panel: Autism and the concept of psychological normality
31 January 2013
The fourth panel discusses the question 'what do autistic spectrum disorders tell us about typical psychological development?' This was explored by Francesca Happé, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience who famously devised the Strange Stories test in which she established that people with ASD had difficulty making sense of ambiguity. In her work, a sample of which was filmed for this discussion, she has devised simple animations which test 'mind-reading' in children with autism, conduct disorders and typical development. In this discussion novelist Kathy Lette, author of The Boy Who Fell to Earth explored the autistic and the 'normal' mind with Francesca Happé and pioneering psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter. The discussion was chaired by Neil Vickers of King's Centre for the Humanities and Health, who has written on Coleridge and the Doctors.
Fifth panel: The gendered brain
26 February 2013
Scores of neuroscientific studies have focused on gender differences in the male and female brain - from aggression centres to emotion processing to systematizing and verbal abilities. In the fifth panel of the series, neuroscientist Professor Melissa Hines, Director of the Hormones and Behaviour Research Lab at the University of Cambridge, introduced her current filmed work on gender and development and discussed gender difference with leading ASD researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, who has suggested that autism is an extreme form of the 'male brain'. Novelist and poet Michèle Roberts posited different ways of thinking about gender. Dr Lara Feigel chaired the panel.
Sixth Panel: You must remember this
28 March 2013
The sixth and final panel of the series convened by Lisa and Lara explored the questions 'how has neuroscience been informed by artists' understanding and vice versa?' and 'do specific spatial, verbal or musical effects structure the workings of memory?' Panel speakers included: Professor of Psychiatry, Michael Kopelman who works on memory disorders, from dementia to amnesia to confabulation; Steven Rose who has written widely on the neuroscience of memory; tenor Ian Bostridge who approaches remembering through music, lyric and voice; and director Simon McBurney of Complicité theatre who considers the production of memory to be mnemonic. Together with Lisa as their chair they teased out the workings of memory.
More detailed biographies on each of the panel speakers are available on The brain and the mind website here.
A documentary film about the project was also made and is available to watch below. The film is a journey exploring the six discussions in the series and the experiments conducted in three of the participating neuroscientists' and psychologists' laboratories.
The film elucidates areas where the neuroscientists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, writers, actors, artists and philosophers agree in the findings from their own very different types of research about the workings of our inner lives. There are also moments of disagreement: moments where language, and the metaphors of their disciplines, come between them.