Dr Marita Vyrgioti

Biography

I am a Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, with a PhD from the University of London (2019). Before joining Essex in 2021, I worked as a Research Assistant at Birkbeck College and Cardiff University and held lectureships at Goldsmiths College and the University of East London. My background includes a psychoanalytic clinical training at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, as well as more than six years of experience delivering psychoanalytic psychotherapy within the NHS (NELFT) and other psychotherapy services across London. My work brings together clinical experiences and academic research, and my core expertise includes (1) the study of coloniality, racism, and racialisation in psychoanalysis, (2) imaginaries of the metabolic function and psychosocial theories of feeding and eating (3) the study of skin and ageing in contemporary beauty cultures. In 2026, I was awarded an Essex Impact Fund (UK Research and Innovation) for the project ‘Skin Narratives in Eastern England’, which I co-lead with Dr Emilia Halton-Hernandez. The project engages with the psychosocial meanings of contemporary anti-ageing tweakments, which I discuss in a forthcoming article titled “Psychosocial Skins: Botox and the Desire for Impermeable Boundaries”. I have a long-standing interest in the economies of race in psychoanalysis, which I explored in my 2023 article “Psychoanalysis in Times of Anti-Blackness”. I am also interested in the function of the analyst in the clinic, and particularly in conceptualisations of the psychoanalytic process as a metabolic activity. I develop these ideas in a forthcoming paper provisionally titled “The Analyst as Stomach.” Alongside Prof Stephen Frosh and Dr Julie Walsh, I co-edited of The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies (2024), the first comprehensive handbook in the field, which won the 2025 Gradiva Award (National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis) for best edited book.

Qualifications

• PhD in Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck College, University of London,

• MA in Foundations of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust/University of Essex,

Appointments

Other academic

• Programme Director, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (4/9/2023 - present)

• Ethics Officer, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (1/9/2021 - 19/12/2024)