Some relevant biographical information

Current position: Emeritus Professor of Political Psychology, Bournemouth University, UK.

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Barry Richards was born in South Wales and grew up in Cardiff. After graduating in psychology from the University of Reading, he trained and worked for some years as a clinical psychologist in the British National Health Service. In 1977 he began lecturing at what was then the North East London Polytechnic, later becoming the University of East London, and was involved there in the establishment, from 1983 on, of psychosocial studies as an area of teaching and research, and from 1992 on in development of the MA Psychoanalytic Studies run in collaboration with the Tavistock Clinic in London. From 1995 he was Professor and Head of the Department of Human Relations, until moving in 2001 to Bournemouth University as Professor of Public Communication, then Professor of Political Psychology, launching Bournemouth's MA Political Psychology in 2016.

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In 1983 he was one of the founding co-editors of the independent interdisciplinary journal Free Associations, and was involved with it until 2000. This journal, published for many years by the late Robert Young, was an influential element in the growth of interest in psychoanalysis in the 1980s and 1990s, and as an open access presence remains an important source of work in psychoanalytic studies, including articles on politics.

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He convened the first 'Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere' conference in London in 1987, as a joint UEL/Free Associations event. This continued annually until 2000, then was revived in 2019 by the present editors of Free Associations in conjunction with the London Freud Museum.

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In 2007 he was a co-founding editor, with Andrew Hoskins and Philip Seib, of the journal Media, War and Conflict, published by Sage.

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