Chris Nicholson

Apart from my work as Head of Department, I also teach on several UG programmes, BA Therapeutic Communication and Therapeutic Organisations, BA Therapeutic Care, for those working with, or interested in working with troubled and traumatised children and adolescents and adults, and now also BA Psychoanalytic Studies, and BA Childhood Studies, currently in its first year.

Before joining the Department, I worked in a range of children's services for over ten years. Among other roles I was the Admissions and Assessment Officer at the Jacques Hall Foundation and Therapeutic Services Manager at Donyland Lodge, both therapeutic communities for traumatised adolescents. My book, co-edited with Professor Michael Irwin and Dr Kedar Nath Dwivedi, 'Children and Adolescents in Trauma: Creative Therapeutic Approaches' was published in January 2010.

I completed my doctoral thesis on the poet Robert Graves in 2007. Entitled: 'The Enduring Wound: Re-contextualising Goodbye to All That, The White Goddess and the Poetry of Robert Graves', the thesis uses a psychodynamic frame to place Graves' life and key writings in the light of his traumatic war experiences, and explores connections between trauma and modernism.

I am currently on the Advisory Board for Children and Young People at the College Centre for Quality Improvement, Royal College of Psychiatrists, and developed the Core Competency Framework for Therapeutic communities. and sit on the Editorial Board of Gravesiana, the Journal of the Robert Graves Society. I have published papers in the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities and in Gravesiana, and am a regular speaker at the bi-annual Robert Graves conferences among others.