Current PhD Student

Tom Spencer

Thesis Title:

Misrule: A Creative-Critical Study of Cultures of Resistance and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Supervisor:

Dr Sophie Coulombeau and Professor Richard Walsh

Description:

My PhD research develops a novel, interdisciplinary model of ‘cultures of resistance’ in the context of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), emphasising the resourcefulness and agency of people with the condition and acknowledging place and creative practice as underrepresented aspects of OCD studies.

The final result of the project will consist of a critical thesis and a novel, Misrule. The latter features a fictional OCD support group who meet in a setting loosely based on an influential mental health institution, the York Retreat, and narrates their process of collective action in response to OCD and the misconceptions surrounding it. My critical thesis, meanwhile, includes three key components: finding instances of what I term ‘proto-OCD,’ or features that are consistent with the modern diagnosis of OCD, in the historical archive of the Retreat, analysing representations of OCD in contemporary novels, and examining strategies of creative resistance being utilised by the OCD community today through a series of interviews with people living and working with the condition.

My project offers an innovative, dynamic and public-facing response to a challenging mental health issue. Through its engagement with the ethics of resistance and its incorporation of historical and cultural contexts, it contributes fruitfully to existing creative practice regarding mental health. By offering new avenues for dramatising the experience of OCD, it asks vital questions about the nature of this misunderstood condition and the society tasked with responding to it.

I am a member of the 2023 White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities cohort, receiving funding through an AHRC Open Competition Studentship. I completed a BA in English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London in 2017 and an MA in English Literature at the University of Warwick in 2019.