International Health Humanities Network Membership

Educational background: 

University of Pécs, Hungary: MA Hungarian, Russian, and English Philology (Literature and Linguistics); Secondary School Teacher; 

University of Cambridge, Trinity College, UK: M.Phil. in European Literature; Ph. D. in Comparative Literature;

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy;

Teaching experience: University of Essex, 2006-2015 (Lecturer in Literature).

Research interests:

Applied literature, bibliotherapy, and transformative education for personal development and healing. Using literature and myth to practise mindfulness and stimulate the imagination. 

I have developed a new branch of applied literature, the skills-focused, mythopoetic approach that uses reflective hermeneutics to develop and strengthen a wide range of mental orientations that contribute to equanimity and promote health and well-being. 

The research focuses on the question of how we can harness the power of imaginative writing (including myth and all genres of literature) to aid the development of negative capability, sense of coherence, mindfulness, psychological hardiness, resilience, self-efficacy, empathy, and other salutogenic mental-emotional attitudes. This approach complements and extends the common theme-centred branches of applied literature. As distinct from common bibliotherapeutic approaches that use the referential aspects of literary texts (the story, the characters, the descriptions, etc.) to promote psychological development and transformation, the skills-focused approach is concerned with guiding the reader through the mindscape of the focused text in order to facilitate reflection, mental-emotional expansion, or transformation through the hermeneutic process itself. The safe and inspiring context of imaginative writing is used to condition the mind to exercise certain creative skills and attitudes that are more difficult to develop in real-life contexts. The regular practice of reading challenging literary texts with a metacognitive awareness of the interpretation process itself can advance one's level of mindfulness and it can also increase the mind's ability to transform itself and its perceptions. 

I wish to implement and test this approach in a wide range of contexts (mainly in education and healthcare) and with different age groups and professions. Currently, I am tailoring the approach to the needs of psychodynamic counsellors.