Prof Ben Bradley
Profile
Ben Bradley holds the Foundation Chair in Psychology at Charles Sturt University.
He was Head of Psychology at CSU from 1998 to 2006. After a period acting as Dean
of Arts, Ben was elected Deputy Presiding Officer of Academic Senate and appointed
Director of the CSU Degree Initiative and is currently Presiding Officer of Academic
Senate. His early research interests were in the foundations of human communication,
targeting the question: what do infants bring to their communication with others? He
completed his PhD on infancy at the University of Edinburgh in 1980. His book
Visions of Infancy (Polity Press, 1989) shows how infancy has served as a tabula rasa
for psychological theorizing, the greatest psychologists using infancy as a screen upon
which to project their own basic assumptions about the adult mind while paying only
secondary attention to babies’ first-hand experiences. Visions of Infancy has been
translated into Spanish, French and Italian. Ben’s most recent book Psychology and
Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2005) redresses the tendency for
psychology to ignore the experiences of the people they teach and study, arguing that
psychologists have overlooked a crucial dimension of experience: the synchronic
(which structures experience independently of time). Currently Ben is in the midst of
three projects. One is on the historical origins of psychological discourse about ‘the
mind’, with particular reference to the effects of Darwin ’s writings. He has recently
been funded to produce a documentary for the Cambridge Darwin Festival (July
2009) on Darwin’s Babies, including a reconstruction of Charles Darwin’s seminal
observations of early infant development (with Matt Olsen). The second is on the
developmental origins of group mind, through the observation of babies in all-infant
groups (with Jennifer Sumsion, Jane Selby, Cathy Urwin and others – funded through
ARC Linkage and the British Academy). Thirdly through the Curriculum Renewal
embodied in the CSU Degree Initiative, Ben is promoting experience-based teaching
in higher education, (including psychology), as argued for in Psychology and
Experience. He has recently been awarded a RIPPLE Research Fellowship for the
second half of 2009.
Current Funded Research Projects
1.
Is Group-Membership Basic to Infant Mental Health? Establishing a
Method
British Academy Grant 2008-9 – £7469 (A$16,100)
(C. Urwin, J.M. Selby, B.S. Bradley)
2.
What is life like for babies and toddlers in childcare? Understanding
the'lived experience' of infants through innovative mosaic methodology.
ARC Linkage (LP0883913) 2008-2011 – A$161,368
(Prof J Sumsion; A/Prof LJ Harrison; Ms F Press; A/Prof S McLeod; Prof BS
Bradley; Dr J Goodfellow)
3.
Documentary on Charles Darwin’s Infant Observations
Cambridge Darwin Festival 2008-2009 – £1,000
(B.S. Bradley)
Plus
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CSU Faculty of Arts Industry-Linked Research Grant 2009 – A$9,542.57
(B.S. Bradley & M. Olsen)
Research Publications, Grants and Presentations
Books, Monographs
Bradley, B.S. (2005). Psychology and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bradley, BS (1989). Visions of Infancy: A Critical Introduction to Child Psychology
(Oxford, Polity Press/Basil Blackwell) pp 213. (Translated into French, Italian
& Spanish).
Book Chapters
Bradley, B.S. (in press). Experiencing symbols. In B. Wagoner (ed.), Symbolic
transformations: Toward an interdisciplinary science of symbols. London:
Routledge.
Bradley, B.S. (in press). Jealousy in infant-peer triads. In M. Legerstee & S. Hart
(eds.), Handbook of jealousy: Theories, principles, and multidisciplinary
approaches. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bradley, B.S. (2009). Rethinking ‘experience’ in professional practice: Lessons from
clinical psychology. In W.C. Green (ed.), Understanding and researching
professional practice. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Bradley, B.S. (2009). Early trios: Patterns of sound and movement in the genesis of
meaning between infants. In S. Malloch and C. Trevarthen (Eds.), Handbook of
Communicative Musicality. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. (pp.263-280)
Bradley, B.S. (2005). The what of psychical change. In A. Gulerce et al. (eds.),
Contemporary Theorizing in Psychology: Global Perspectives. New York:
Captus Press (pp.66-76).
Selby, J.M. and Bradley, B.S. (2005). Psychologist as moral agent: Negotiating
praxis-oriented knowledge in infancy. In A. Gulerce et al. (Eds.) Contemporary
Theorizing in Psychology: Global Perspectives. New York: Captus Press
(pp.242-250).
Bradley, B.S. (2002). Synchronicity as a feature of the synchronic. In V. Walkerdine
(Ed.), Challenging Subjects: Critical Psychology for a New Millennium.
London: Palgrave. (pp.161-176).
Refereed Journal Articles
Bradley, B.S. (2008). The Vygotskian family in the supreme court of practice. Culture
& Psychology, 14, 37-44.
Du Chesne, L. & Bradley, B.S. (2007). The subjective experience of the lesbian
(m)other: An exploration of the construction of lesbian maternal identity. Gay
and Lesbian Issues in Psychology Review, 3 (1), 25-33.
Bradley, B.S., Deighton, J. and Selby, J.M. (2004). The ‘Voices’ Project: Capacitybuilding in Community Development for Youth at Risk. Journal of Health
Psychology, 9, 197-212
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Bradley, B.S. and Selby, J.M. (2004). Observing Infants in Groups: The Clan
Revisited. The International Journal of Infant Observation.. (C. Urwin and K.
Arnold, eds. Special Issue on “Developmental Psychology and PsychoAnalysis”)7, 107-122.
Selby, J.M. and Bradley, B.S. (2003a). Infants in Groups: A Paradigm for the Study of Early
Social Experience. Human Development, 46, 197-221.
Selby, J.M. and Bradley, B.S. (2003b). Infants in Groups: Extending the Debate. Human
Development, 46, 247-249.
Selby, J.M. and Bradley, B.S. (2003c). Action Research Intervention with Young People: A
City Council’s Response. Australasian Psychiatry, 11, S121-S126
Bradley, B.S. and Morss, J.M. (2002). Social construction in a world at risk: Towards a
psychology of experience. Theory and Psychology, 12, 531-558.
Bradley, B.S. (2001). An Approach to Synchronicity: From Synchrony to Synchronization.
International Journal of Critical Psychology, 1, 121-147.
Bradley, B.S. and Selby, J.M. (2001). To criticise the critic: Songs of experience.
Australian Psychologist, 36(1), 84-87.
Hayes B.A., Muller R., Bradley B.S. (2001). Perinatal depression: A randomized controlled
trial of an antenatal education intervention for primparas. Birth, 28(1), 28-35.
Published Conference Proceedings
Bradley, B.S. (2005). The all-important mother: scientific fact or cultural fantasy? In
M. Atherton (ed.), Proceedings of the University of Western Sydney’s College of
Arts, Education and Social Sciences Conference: Scholarship and Community.
Sydney: UWS.
Malloch, S., Crncec, R., Adam, B. & Bradley, B.S. (2005). Infants interacting with
infants. In M. Atherton (ed.), Proceedings of the University of Western Sydney’s
College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences Conference: Scholarship and
Community. Sydney: UWS.
Conference Presentations
Bradley, B.S. (2008). The Group Psychology of Infants: Implications for Mental
Health. Keynote Address to the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health,
Adelaide, October.
Bradley, B.S. (2008). Group Relations in the First Year: New Understandings of
Infant Psychopathology And Its Treatment. Queen Elizabeth Centre
Conference, Melbourne, November.
Bradley, B.S. & J.M. Selby (2008). Group Relations in the First Year: New
Understandings of Infant Psychopathology and its Treatment. Invited seminar to
Tavistock Institute, London, June.
Malloch, S., Crncec, R., Bradley, B.S., Paul, C., Selby, J. & Salo-Thomson, F. (2006).
The controlled observation of infants in groups: A tool for the assessment of
socio-emotional functioning in the second six months of life. Presentation to the
World Association of Infant Mental Health, Paris, July 14th 2006
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