About
Laura E. Fischer is a Researcher, Mental Health Activist, and Artist who specialises in trauma.
Her work weaves scientific methods with creative approaches, and vice versa. She has focused both her undergraduate studies in the arts and her postgraduate studies in psychiatry on developing novel interventions to respond to violence, abuse, and neglect. In particular she is interested in the neurophysiology of developmental trauma and the creative use of body-based methods to enable traumatic memories to be processed. She was awarded for this work the Improvement Leader Fellowship by NIHR CLAHRC NWL and she now continues to work with NIHR ARC NWL as an Honorary Research Fellow.
Laura is also an active advocate for the inclusion of lived experience in research agendas and public discourse. She believes in openly challenging the societal constructs that underpin violence, abuse, and neglect, and she believes in reframing traumatic experiences as narratives of resilience, not victimisation, and healing as a self-led transformative path toward growth, not an other-led attempt to fix broken individuals. She regularly works with trauma survivors both through action research and through workshops, and has herself been public about her own experience of trauma.
Laura has spoken at numerous conferences and TEDx, has written sections of several books and articles, and has had her artwork and films exhibited internationally since 2005. She is also a Visiting Lecturer at different universities including UCL and Central Saint Martins. From 2020, Laura will serve on the Editorial Board of The Lancet Psychiatry journal. In addition to her independent practice, Laura works for the McPin Foundation as a Public Involvement Coordinator and Researcher. Her primary focus in this role is coordinating public and patient involvement (PPI) across the Public Mental Health research programme for England under the NIHR School for Public Health Research.
In sum, she tries in whichever ways she can to contribute to shifting things for the better.
Conferences
2019 Keynote Speaker, Brunel Occupational Therapy Conference, Brunel University, London, UK
2019 Plenary Speaker, Wellbeing Conference for Anaesthetists, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, UK
2018 Plenary Speaker, Journée Romande des Soins Infirmiers, healthcare conference, Lausanne, Switzerland
2018 Keynote Speaker, The Bigger Picture: Activism, Social Practice & Art for Health, Central Saint Martins, London, UK
2018 Keynote Speaker, Sheffield Healthcare Improvement, Sheffield Health & Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, UK
2018 Panelist, Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Glasgow, UK
2018 Speaker & Panelist, MCA Expo, healthcare improvement & leadership conference, Shef eld, UK
2018 Plenary Speaker, Healthcare Improvement Event, NIHR CLAHRC NWL, London, UK
2017 TEDx Talk Speaker, The Happy Generation, TEDxULB, Brussels, Belgium
2017 Speaker, Future Citizen Innovation Series: Reinventing Healthcare Technology, Amazon WS, London, UK
2016 Speaker, Kent Mental Health Festival, Folkestone, UK
Exhibitions, Screenings, Performances
2019 Film Screening Cinemas of Sisterhood: Trauma and Resistance, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
2018 Film Screening, Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Glasgow, UK
2018 Film Screening, Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 Film Screening, national television, Switzerland
2017 Exhibition The Traumatised Self: Mind, Brain, and Body, Willesden Gallery, London, UK
2017 Exhibition The Character of Physical Law: Physics & Art, Willesden Gallery, London, UK
2017 Exhibition The Traumatised Self: Mind, Brain, and Body, MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre,
King’s College London, London, UK
2017 Exhibition Trauma-Focused Movement Language, Central Saint Martins Museum, London, UK
2017 Film Screening, Central Saint Martins, London, UK
2016 Performance, community project, Royal Albert Hall outreach program, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK
2016 Film Screening & Live Score, collaboration with London Sinfonietta Orchestra, Southwark Playhouse, London, UK
2016 Exhibition Focal Perception, ArtMoorHouse, London, UK
2015 Film Screening & Live Score, collaboration with London Sinfonietta Orchestra, British Film Institute, London, UK
2015 Exhibition Femme, 1650 Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2014 Performance, PDP Collective, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
2013 Exhibition Waters, 1650 Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2013 Exhibition Human and Machine, Central Saint Martins, London, UK
2010 Exhibition Body Language, Metropolis, Morges, Switzerland
2008 Exhibition Body Language, Le Tempo, Yverdon, Switzerland
2005 Exhibition Through My Lens, Art Gallery Casamundo, Lausanne, Switzerland
Publications
2019 The Lancet Psychiatry (present & forthcoming)
Series of photographs based on my work on trauma and the body published monthly
as covers for the journal’s 2019 issues & an accompanying article to be published later this year
2019 Palgrave (forthcoming)
Contributor to the book Patient Knowledge: A Cornerstone for the Transformation of Care and
Health Organisations
2019 House Sparrow Press
Violence and Trauma: A Societal Reality We Are All Responsible For, essay written for the
book Doorways on homelessness, women, trauma and resistance
2018 CSM Public
Trauma-Focused Movement Language, article on my work, vol. 2, pp. 49
2018 Poésie en Mouvement
Contributor to the book Arythmie
Awards
2018 Winner, Mental Health Arts and Film Festival of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 NOVA Award Nominee, Central Saint Martins, London, UK
2011 BCV Prize for Academic Excellence, Marcelin, Morges, Switzerland
2008 BEAUSOBRE Prize in Visual Arts, Morges, Switzerland
2008 BEAUSOBRE Prize in Photography, Morges, Switzerland
2008 BEAUSOBRE Prize in Political Science, Morges, Switzerland