Robert Lemelson

Dr. Robert Lemelson is an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA who has worked in Southeast Asia, particularly on the islands of Bali and Java in Indonesia, for most of his career. His work explores the relationship of culture and history to trauma, psychiatric illness, structural and gender-based violence, and their relationship to subjectivity and phenomenology. He is also a visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker with over twenty years of experience conducting fieldwork and producing longitudinal film studies. In 2007, he founded Elemental Productions, an ethnographic documentary film production company. He has completed over 15 films on a wide range of topics including mental illness, polygamy and gender-based violence, the sex trade, genocide, kinship and ritual, neurodiversity, and trance and possession. He is president of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, a Los Angeles-based philanthropic organization that focuses on the integration of the social and neurosciences, since 1999. He is also the co-editor of three volumes with Cambridge University Press: “Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives” and “Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health” and “Culture, Mind and Brain: Emerging Concepts, Models and Applications”. His newest book, “Widening the Frame:Visual Psychological Anthropology Perspectives on Trauma, Gendered Violence and Stigma in Indonesia,” was published in 2021 by Palgrave Press.