Dr James Costello

Qualifications:

BSc(Hons), PGDip Counselling, MSc (Psychotherapy), PhD, CChem, Registered Member MBACP (Accredited), BACP Senior Accredited Supervisor (Groups)

Position:

Senior Lecturer

Department:

College of Health, Science and Society

Telephone:

+441173282490

Email:

James.Costello@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

I am an author, psychotherapist, and BACP Senior Accredited Supervisor (Groups) whose interests span clinical practice, philosophy, and organisational life.

Over more than two decades, I have worked across NHS services, higher education, the third sector, and public inquiries, including work connected with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and the UK COVID-19 Inquiry. Much of my current activity takes place where complexity, responsibility, and human vulnerability converge, and where established frameworks of understanding begin to strain.

I have taught counselling and psychotherapy across undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral contexts. This experience continues to shape how I think about practice, particularly where established models begin to reach their limits.

My writing and professional interests are concerned with how people live and practise when difficulties do not readily resolve. This includes grief, illness, trauma, organisational complexity, and situations where responsibility persists without clear solutions. In these contexts, attention often turns toward accompaniment, ethical restraint, and the capacity to remain with what does not yield easily to technique or explanation.

Area of expertise

Practice and Supervision

My practice centres on supervision, reflective practice, and dialogue with experienced practitioners and teams, particularly where the work carries significant ethical, emotional, or organisational weight.

• Clinical supervision
• Reflective practice
• Group supervision
• Organisational reflection
• Professional ethics
• Relational, phenomenological, and hermeneutic approaches to practice

My supervisory and reflective practice activities are focused primarily on experienced practitioners and teams working in complex environments where established approaches encounter their limits. These spaces provide opportunities to think carefully about uncertainty, responsibility, and situations that resist straightforward resolution. Some of this activity continues through small practitioner groups committed to sustained reflection on complex practice situations.

Research and Writing

I am the author of:

• Workplace Wellbeing: A Relational Approach (Routledge, 2020)
• Philosophical Foundations of Psychotherapy: Radical Relationality (Routledge, 2024)

Forthcoming:

• Entwined Selves: Relational Encounter in Psychotherapy (with Niall Keane, Routledge, 2026)

Current research and writing includes:

• Hermeneutic encounter and the case of Ellen West
• Reflection, self-account, and therapeutic encounter
• A HEIF-funded study exploring the lived experience of insomnia and sleep disturbance
• Organisational reflection and accompaniment in complex settings

Before entering psychotherapy, I trained as a chemist, completing a PhD and subsequently holding research fellowships at Oxford University and with the Leverhulme Trust. My scientific training continues to shape how I think, fostering habits of careful observation, disciplined inquiry, and a reluctance to mistake ready explanations for understanding.

Publications

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