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Dr Peter Redman

Senior Lecturer, Sociology

Sociology

peter.redman@open.ac.uk

Biography

Research interests

I studied at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, a background that continues to inform my thinking.  However,  I now work in the fields of psychoanalytic sociology and psychosocial studies and am broadly interested in the unconscious dimensions of social life, particularly those that can be said to have a collective or properly social character.

I previously edited (with Stephen Frosh and Wendy Hollway) the Palgrave book series, Studies in the Psychosocial and am a former editor of the journal, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.  I am on the advisory board of the book series Psychoanalytic Horizons and  a member of the British Sociological Association, the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society.

With Wendy Maples, I  co-authored Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide (Sage, 2017) now in its fifth edition.

A repository of research publications and other research outputs can be viewed at The Open University's Open Research Online.

Teaching interests

I have taught on a range of OU sociology and interdisicplinary social science modules, most recently as chair of D113 Global challenges: social science in action.

Publications

Book

Attachment: Sociology and social worlds (2008)

Book Chapter

'I just wanted her out': Attachment, the psycho-social and media texts (2025)

Graham Dawson’s “Soldier Heroes”: An Overlooked Classic of Psychosocial Studies (2024)

A psychosocial coming into play: Researching authenticity in therapy, the academy, and friendship (2023)

Graham Dawson’s Soldier Heroes: An Overlooked Classic of Psychosocial Studies (2022)

Too much, too young? Social media, moral panics and young people’s mental health (2021)

Boxing masculinities: Attachment, embodiment and heroic narratives (2008)

Affective attachment in families (2008)

The uses of sociology: introduction (2005)

Quantitative sociological research (2005)

Journal Article

A Sad Story? Time, Interpretation and Feeling in Biographical Methods (2023)

Introduction to the special issue on psychoanalysis and sociology (2019)

Gratitude and leave-taking: Editorial reflections, 2003-2017 (2017)

Once more with feeling: What is the psychosocial anyway? (2016)

Special issue on Alfred Lorenzer: Introduction (2010)

Alfred Lorenzer and the depth-hermeneutic method (2010)

Comments on the status of Boyhood Studies (2009)

Affect revisited: transference-countertransference and the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience (2009)

Who cares about the psycho-social?: masculinities, schooling and the unconscious (2005)

The Narrative formation of identity revisited: narrative construction, agency and the unconscious (2005)

Boys Bonding: same-sex friendship, the unconscious and heterosexual masculinities (2002)

The Discipline of love: negotiation and regulation in boys' performance of a romance-based heterosexual masculinity (2001)

Boys and girls come out to play: making masculinities and femininities in school playgrounds (2001)

Private girls and public worlds: producing femininities in the primary school (2001)