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Dr Magda Schmukalla
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Email
m.schmukalla@essex.ac.uk -
Location
5A.116, Colchester Campus
Profile
Biography
I am a transdisciplinary researcher in the Social Sciences. My research brings together critical theory, psychoanalysis, feminist/new materialist theory and art. I experiment with artistic, self-reflective and ethnographic methods in order to construct psychosocial theories that are able to acknowledge sensual, repressed, fluid or unstable realities. I focus particularly on the critical and epistemological potential of liminal experiences such as experiences of political transitions, migration, pregnancy and artistic production. I have been awarded an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to publish a book on my theory of post-communist thresholds (Communist Ghosts, 2021, Palgrave). The book examines how we can imagine and speak about new and better worlds if we work through experiences that are shaped by the breakdown of Soviet-type communism. And I am a co-initiator of a network of artists, curators and social theorists who explore how recent encounters with ruptures in neoliberal routines, such as the Covid 19 pandemic or climate change, have revived and rearranged desires and fears associated with communism (www.communisthauntings.com). I welcome proposals for PhDs on topics related to my research interests: • Contemporary art • Aesthetic epistemologies • Threshold experiences and experiences of rupture • Transgenerational trauma • Post-communist and communist experiences • Posthumanism • Quantum Physics and its application in psychosocial studies • Psychoanalysis and art • Decoloniality • Transnational Feminism
Qualifications
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PhD Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck College, (2017)
Appointments
University of Essex
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Fixed-term teacher, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (1/10/2021 - 31/12/2022)
Other academic
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Associate Lecturer, Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College (1/10/2016 - 31/8/2022)
Research and professional activities
Current research
Hope in Fragments. A Psychosocial Analysis of Post-communist Art and Political Hope in Times of Polycrisis
Contemporary societies face an intensifying polycrisis — the convergence of climate catastrophe, democratic erosion, and economic precarity — which places practices and narratives of political hope under severe pressure. Hope in Fragments investigates how fragments of hope are preserved and radically reinvented in times when the future itself seems foreclosed. Drawing on psychosocial studies, affect theory and critical social theory, the project treats hope not as naïve optimism but as a structured orientation toward positivity, creativity and the good under conditions of uncertainty. It does so by studying art practice and artistic infrastructures in post-communist sites in Central and Eastern Europe — societies which carry an embodied, culturally sedimented knowledge of living through systemic collapse and the loss of future imaginaries. This seed-funding application supports the foundational phase of the project, developing collaborative partnerships and a shared methodology in Latvia and Poland in preparation for a larger interdisciplinary research programme.
Communist Hauntings. Aesthetics of Disrupted Times
We examine how some of the more recent and imminent ruptures in western narratives and worldviews, triggered by events such as the Covid 19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or the climate catastrophe, revive experiences, images and desires associated with communism. More specifically, we seek to understand how communist and post-communist sentiments, memories and encounters impose themselves as dream-images or nightmares whenever the smooth workings of a neoliberal everyday are disrupted. We conceptualize, visualize, and conjure the different forms of hauntings in which such communist ghosts continue to be present, and ask how the world can be seen differently when examined through these ghostly and rearranged landscapes.
More information about this project
Public Couch. Interventions between Public Art and Psychoanalysis.
This research project imagines and theorizes a new figure and experience, the Public Couch, by drawing on ideas and events from two sites, public art and the psychoanalytic couch. It does so to better understand a specific type of artistic intervention into affective atmospheres in public places. Neither art therapy nor conventional public artwork, the Public Couch is where and when art in the public space diffracts with the workings of psychoanalysis, allowing for an engagement with unconscious public affects that sit beyond and between individual bodies and minds.
Conferences and presentations
Public Couch. Interventions Between Art and Psychoanalysis
PsyArt. Psychology and the Arts Conference, University of Essex, 6/2026
42nd International Psychology and the Arts Conference
University of Essex, 6/2026
Hope Now. Future Imaginaries in Times of Political and EcologicalTransitions
Memory Studies Association MSA, Charles University, Prague, 7/2025
Hope Now. Future Imaginaries in Times of Political and Ecological Transitions.
SIPP/ISSP Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, University of Essex, 6/2025
Hope Now. Future Imaginaries in Times of Political and Ecological Transitions
Midlands Conference in Critical Thought, University of Derby, 25/4/2025
Psychoanalysis and Radical Psychiatry
16/11/2024
Missed Sections beyond Time and Space. Reflections on the War in Ukraine and transgenerational pain in Europe
BSA Virtual Annual Conference 2024, Virtual Space, 4/4/2024
Public Couch. Artistic Interventions in Public Space
Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) Annual Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, United States, 27/10/2023
Dig a hole and step inside. On collective wounds and artistic interventions in the public space
Midlands Conference in Critical Thought, Midlands Conference in Critical Thought, Nottingham, United Kingdom, 5/4/2023
Teaching and supervision
Current teaching responsibilities
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The Psychosocial Imagination (PA134)
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Long Essay (PA213)
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Love. Loss. Attachment: Freud and Object Relations Theory (PA401)
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Current Debates in Psychosocial Studies (PA407)
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Psychoanalytic Theory: From Melanie Klein to Jacques Lacan (PA901)
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Psychoanalysis and the Psychosocial (PA942)
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Research Methods and Dissertation (PA981)
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Topics in Critical Race and Transnational Feminisms (PA993)
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Research with Children and Young People (PA944)
Publications
Journal articles (1)
Schmukalla, M-A., (2022). Memory as a Wound in Words. On transgenerational trauma, ethical memory and artistic speech. Feminist Theory: an international interdisciplinary journal. 25 (1), 23-41
Books (1)
Schmukalla, M., (2021). Communist Ghosts Post-Communist Thresholds, Critical Aesthetics and the Undoing of Modern Europe. Springer International Publishing. 9783030837297
Book chapters (3)
Schmukalla, M., (2024). Living Prior Being. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. Springer International Publishing. 651- 665. 9783031303654
Schmukalla, M-A., (2024). The word remains. War Diaries in ruptured time and space. In: Psychosocial and Cultural Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: Imprints and Dreamscapes. Editors: Shumylovych, B. and Zolkos, M., . Routledge. 117- 130. 9781003449096
Schmukalla, M., (2023). Living Prior Being Abortions and the Knowledge of Enigmas. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. Editors: Frosh, S., Vyrgioti, M. and Walsh, J., . Palgrave Macmillan. 1- 15. 978-3-030-61510-9
Grants and funding
2026
Hope in Fragments. A Psychosocial Analysis of Post-communist Art and Political Hope in Times of Polycrisis
British Academy