Hello :)
I’m a psychiatrist and interdisciplinary researcher (MD, PhD) in mental health and philosophy of psychology, affiliated with Birmingham University’s Institute for Mental Health and Melbourne University’s Centre for Youth Mental Health.
I have extensive experience of working as a consultant in NHS teams providing early intervention for people experiencing psychosis and in general community settings in the UK.
My research sits at the intersection of phenomenological psychopathology, philosophy of psychiatry, and mental health, with a particular focus on understanding subjective experience in psychosis.
Email: r.ritunnano.3[at]bham.ac.uk
Read my profile
in The Lancet
Research interests: early psychosis, delusion formation, phenomenological psychopathology, philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy and psychology of emotion, qualitative methods, embodied cognition, embodied metaphor.
My PhD research(Priestley Scholarship, 2019-2025) investigated the experience and meaning of delusions in psychosis from multiple perspectives, focusing on applications of phenomenology across psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics.
I’m also interested in the therapeutic and ethical implications of phenomenological philosophy, including how phenomenology can help address stigma and epistemic injustice in mental healthcare. I was awarded the 2021 Wolfe Mays Essay Prize for an essay on this topic.
Over the past year, I’ve been working with the Birmingham Network for Phenomenology and Mental Health, and with Prof. Matthew Broome, Prof. Lisa Bortolotti, Prof. Barnaby Nelson (Melbourne), Dr. Clara Humpston (York), Prof. Jeannette Littlemore.
I’ve recently joined the Psychology of Psychosis Lab at University College Dublin, where I’m collaborating on a number of research projects focusing on the phenomenology of unusual experiences and beliefs, embodiment, and the role of emotions in mediating the effects of complex trauma.
In this 90-second video, I tell you all about my PhD research!
You can watch more short videos made by Women in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham about their amazing research...