Professor Ben Bradley
BA Human Sciences (Oxford) 1974
MA Human Sciences (Oxford) 1977
PhD Psychology (Edinburgh) 1980
Ben Bradley
Bio
Ben Bradley holds the Foundation Chair in Psychology at Charles Sturt University . He was Head of Psychology at CSU from 1998 to 2006. His first research interests were in the foundations of human communication, targeting the question: what do infants bring to their communication with others? He completed his PhD on infancy at the University of Edinburgh in 1980. His book Visions of Infancy (Polity Press, 1989) shows how infancy has served as a tabula rasa for psychological theorizing, the greatest psychologists using infancy as a screen upon which to project their own basic assumptions about the adult mind while paying only secondary attention to babies’ first-hand experiences. Visions of Infancy has been translated into Spanish, French and Italian. Ben’s most recent book Psychology and Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2005) redresses the tendency for psychology to ignore the experiences of the people they teach and study, arguing that psychologists have overlooked a crucial dimension of experience: the synchronic (which structures experience independently of time). Currently Ben is in the midst of two projects. One is on the historical origins of psychological discourse about ‘the mind’, with particular reference to the effects of Darwin ’s writings. The other is on the developmental origins of group mind, through the observation of babies in all-infant groups. Ben promotes the experience-based teaching of psychology.
Teaching
- Introductory Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Psychology of Language
- Research Methods I & II
- Current Issues in Psychology
- Psychology Dissertation
- Problems Emerging in Childhood and Adolescence
Research
- The Acquisition of Relational Knowledge in Infancy
- Infants in Groups
- Darwin and Psychology
- The Correspondence of William James
- The Origins of Psychological Discourse
- Critical Psychology
Selected Grants
- CSU/UWS $34,000 study on "Infants in Groups" 2003-2004
- ARC $28 000 "Harvard Infant Study" 1997-1998.
- NH&MRC $146, 000 "Perinatal Dysphoria" 1994-1996
- Bathurst City Council/CSU $295,486 “Youth at Risk” 2001-2004
Recent publications
Membership of professional associations and groups
- Registered Psychologist (NSW)
- International Society for Theoretical Psychology
