Creative and Collaborative Research

I work at the intersection of creative practices, psychotherapy, and critical theory, developing contemporary methodologies that bridge psychosocial, posthuman, and creative-relational approaches to explore contemporary lived experience.  My research is in constant dialogue with my clinical and professional work.

I work autonomously of institutions, but frequently collaborate with educators in University settings, with other psychotherapists, with artists and socially engaged practitioners and creative industries leaders. I continue to develop my own creative practice as a fiction writer.

My doctoral thesis, Auto/fictioning (the) Contemporary (in) Human Relations and Psychotherapeutic Processes (University of Edinburgh, Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry, 2022) treats autofiction as a research method for examining contemporary psychotherapy —  and is written using the conventions of the autofictional literary style, thus using a contemporary lens to view and make sense of relational experience.

The thesis mirrors its own theory, taking the form of an autofictional novel following a UK-based psychotherapist navigating life and practice in the years following the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Four interlinked ideas run through the work:

Fictioning as a speculative zone. Blending personal reflection with fictional framing allows experience to be worked through imaginatively, generating new thought about relational dynamics that aren't articulated propositionally. This has direct clinical application: the same principle operates when a person begins to narrate their experience differently, and something shifts that wasn't accessible through direct analysis.

Capturing contemporary experience. Autofiction is suited to the oscillating, uncertain quality of contemporary life — what cultural theory calls a metamodern "structure of feeling." By setting the novel in the aftermath of the referendum, the work demonstrates how large-scale political and social fractures reshape individual psychological spaces and, in turn, the therapeutic relationship itself.

The interplay of creative form and relational action. The form of the writing shapes how relational processes can be understood. It enacts more than describes what happens in the relations between people. This aligns with Winnicott's concept of potential space and Ogden's analytical third: the intermediate territory where meaning is co-created, neither wholly internal nor wholly external.

Posthuman and psychosocial relationality. The work challenges the neoliberal view of the insulated, bounded individual, illustrating instead how we are constantly co-emerging with our environments, objects, languages, and cultural stories. This mode of perception changes how I listen in the consulting room. The political moment, the material setting, the cultural context can all be seen as participants in what unfolds.

I'm currently reworking the thesis for publication as a sole-authored monograph (see Current Projects below).

• Untethering the Gates of Our Enclosure: A meeting of art and psychoanalytic practices at the borders where life meets death. Collaboration with Irish time-based artist Nicola Lane. Book chapter submission for a collection on collaborative approaches to loss and mourning, edited by Jane Speedy and Goya Velasquez Wilson, to be published by Routledge in 2027.

• Autofiction and Psychotherapy Monograph:  Re-working PhD thesis with new introduction for publication as sole-authored monograph on the relationship between autofiction and psychotherapy, to be submitted to Routledge or Karnac Press.

• The Dream Society: Collaborative inquiry with likely publications aimed at Qualitative Inquiry (methods) and The Association for Psychosocial Studies Journal (content and process). Presented at APS Conference (2025) and ECQI (2025).

• Soundscaping Our Interdependence: Exploring the use of sonic objects in facilitated group processes, in collaboration with Arts Educator Graham Barton (UAL). Workshop presented at UNESCO Week of Sound (Edinburgh, 2024); workshop and paper presented at ECQI Conference (Helsinki, 2025). 

Journal Articles

Dunlop, M., Mendus, A., Price, M., Abadie, K., Brown, L., Laidler, C., Liebmann, M., Malthouse, M., & Mendus, G. (2024). Regeneration: A Collaborative Writing, Making, and Moving Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 32(1), 63-74. 

Garland, M. C., Brown, L., Dunlop, M., Laidler, C., Liebmann, M., Puntil, D., Sakelliaradis, A., & Speedy, J. (2024). Using Fragments to Uncover Connections Through Call and Response, Resonance, and Dissonance. International Review of Qualitative Research, 8(3), 314-330.

Mendus, A., Kirkpatrick, D., Laidler, C., Speedy, J., Dunlop, M., Gallant, M., Sakellariadis, A., Wyatt, J., & Wyatt, T. (2022). Remembering Sue: Last Writes. Qualitative Inquiry, 28(8-9), 917-930.

Dunlop, M., Del Negro, G., de Munck, K., Gale, K., Mackay, S., Price, M., Sakellariadis, A., Soler, G, Speedy, J. & van Hove, G. (Oct 2020). Something Happened in the Room: Conceptualising intersubjectivation. International Review of Qualitative Research, 14(1), 67-86.

Dunlop, M. (May 2019). Like the Moon Rising: Standing in the Brexit Dawn. International Review of Qualitative Inquiry, 12(1), 17-26. 

Edwards, H., Dunlop, M., Mallick, A. & O'Callaghan, F. (2015). Outcomes following childhood arterial ischaemic stroke: A Delphi Consensus on what parents want from future research. European Journal of Paediatric Neurology, 19(2), 181-187.

Book Chapters

Dunlop, M., Puntil, D. & Speedy, J. (in press). Two cats, a teacup and a pink water bottle: collaboratively writing to find 'psychoanalytic-posthumanism' emergent in psychotherapeutic practice. In C. Daigle, M. Hayler & D. Sands (Eds.) Posthumanism in Practice Revisited. London: Bloomsbury. Publication anticipated late 2026.

Speedy, J, Kirkpatrick, D, Porter, S, Shrenk, S, Wyatt, J., Dunlop, M., Laidler, C., Page, M. & Sakellaridis, A. (2021). Introduction(s) to this body of works/bodily workings/works of these bodies. In D. Kirkpatrick, S. Porter, J. Speedy & J. Wyatt. (Eds). Artful Collaborative Inquiry: Making and Writing Creative, Collaborative Research. London: Routledge.

Speedy, J. with Bramwell-Davies, P., Brodie, C., Dunlop, M., Filer, J., Malthouse, M., Porter, S., Scarlett, C. & Younie, L. (2021). Meandering alongside Doreen Massey. In D. Kirkpatrick, S. Porter, J. Speedy & J. Wyatt. (Eds). Artful Collaborative Inquiry. London: Routledge.

Dunlop, M. (2021). Introduction(s) to part two. In D. Kirkpatrick, S. Porter, J. Speedy & J. Wyatt. (Eds). Artful Collaborative Inquiry: Making and Writing Creative, Collaborative Research. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780367854843

Kirkpatrick, D., Gallant, M., Mendus, A., & Wyatt, T. with Dunlop, M., Laidler, C., Sakellariadis, A., Speedy, J., & Wyatt, J. (2021). Remembering Sue: Last Writes. In D. Kirkpatrick, S. Porter, J. Speedy & J. Wyatt. (Eds). Artful Collaborative Inquiry. London: Routledge.