Midlands Psychology Group

Conference 2010
Beyond Ignorance
15-16 October, at Birmingham

Venue
The Uffculme Centre
Queensbridge Road
Moseley
Birmingham B13 8QY

How to get there

Over the past 30 years the public finances have been plundered and public space has been colonized by corporate interests while illness and misery are being privatized. As part of this process, public services, not least education and health, have been subjected to the systematic cultivation of ignorance. Psychology is fast becoming just another marketed product without intellectual substance or scientific integrity. The conference will aim to explore this state of affairs in the hope of identifying ways beyond it.

We have invited contributions from some prominent critics of the 'privatized world' and hope to provide time for people to consider the issues and possible lines of further action.

Speakers:-

David Healy, leading critic of the relations between psychiatry and the drug industry. See for example The David Healy Affair

Keir Milburn is a precarious political theorist, who teaches at the department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leeds. He is an editor of Turbulence: Ideas for movement and co-editor of the books What Would it Mean to Win?'(PM Press: 2010) and Shut Them Down!: The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements (Autonomedia 2005).

Kate Pickett, co-author with Richard Wilkinson of The Spirit Level

Allyson Pollock, author of NHS plc. See the article by Pollock and Price on the proposed NHS changes in the Guardian, 19.7.10

David Smail, member of the Midlands Psychology group and author of Power, Interest and Psychology