Lea Kindler

Biography

I studied Psychology, Archaeology and Cultural Studies in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and I currently work as a Managing Director in the construction industry. My interdisciplinary academic background has significantly shaped my research focus. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the diverse psychosocial effects of peoples engagement with cultural heritage in all its forms, from the creation of collective meaning to well-being. More specifically, this includes the psychology of memory culture; the embodied experience of historical landscapes; how tangible heritage can regulate emotions, and vice versa; how psychosocial factors influence reflections on the past; and the conscious and unconscious social processes involved in the mediation of history and their effect on issues such as belonging and mental health. When engaging with these topics, it is very important to me to take a reflexive approach that critically challenges normativity, particularly with regard to my own role as a researcher influenced by Western thought and epistemic hegemonies. My PhD project at the University of Essex builds on my two Master's theses. For the first one, I examined the narrative-psychological effects of the landscape of a Swiss open-air museum. To this end, I conducted a phenomenological analysis of cultural identity scripts and visualised them in two psychologically effective spatial modes using geospatial data analysis, which enabled me to consider them as forms of nationalist identity mystification. This work was awarded a dissertation prize, and the thesis was later published as an article in the journal Culture & Psychology. In my second thesis, I assessed affective latencies in media debates about the restitution of colonial collections in Swiss museums from a moral-psychological perspective. I am currently revising the manuscript for publication. For my doctoral thesis, supervised by Raluca Soreanu, I am theorising how unconscious affective dynamics that arise when engaging with colonial museum exhibits shape racialised subjectivities and fragment social relationships. Publications: Kindler, L. (2026). Farm Fiction: Experiencing Narrative Identities in the Swiss Ballenberg Museum. Culture & Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X261434551 Kindler, L. (in preparation). 'Were still looking at it': Emotional and Moral Meaning Construction in Swiss Debates on Colonial Artefacts. Memberships: The Relational School Association for Psychoanalysis in Culture and Society International Research Association for Provenance Research Association Suisse de Recherche en Provenance

Qualifications

• BA in Cultural Studies University of Lucerne (2023)

• MA in Archaeology and Heritage University of Leicester (2025)

• MSc in Psychological Sciences (awaiting final results) Brunel University of London (2026 )

Thesis