My research lies in the areas of philosophy of psychiatry and social anthropology. As part of my PhD at the LSE, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Akha people of highland Laos, examining their etiological system, healing rituals, shamanic tradition, and overall medical philosophy. I focused particularly on how healing rituals work and how people think that they work. In parallel to my anthropological studies, I conducted research within the science of the ‘placebo effect’ in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team from Harvard Medical School. I have also published on philosophy of psychiatry (developing the idea of 'externalis…
My research lies in the areas of philosophy of psychiatry and social anthropology. As part of my PhD at the LSE, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Akha people of highland Laos, examining their etiological system, healing rituals, shamanic tradition, and overall medical philosophy. I focused particularly on how healing rituals work and how people think that they work. In parallel to my anthropological studies, I conducted research within the science of the ‘placebo effect’ in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team from Harvard Medical School. I have also published on philosophy of psychiatry (developing the idea of 'externalist psychiatry'), the extended mind, enactivism, and predictive processing. Bringing some of these strands together, I am now writing a book on the global history of psychiatry that focuses on animistic medical systems.
