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 academic, psychotherapist, supervisor, and author whose work brings together psychotherapy, phenomenology, and the natural sciences. Over more than two decades, I have worked across NHS services, higher education, the third sector, and high-stakes public contexts, alongside a sustained academic career.

Orientation of my work. My work is concerned with how people live and practise when familiar frameworks of understanding begin to strain, including grief, illness, organisational complexity, and situations where responsibility persists without the promise of resolution. Across this work, I am interested in accompaniment, ethical restraint, and forms of care that remain meaningful at the limits of explanation and technique.

Teaching and professional engagement. Alongside writing and professional practice, I remain actively engaged in teaching, supervision, and doctoral-level work across applied and professional contexts. I have a long-standing background in the training and formation of psychotherapists and supervisors, and I continue to contribute to the field through clinical work, supervision, consultancy, and advisory roles where clinical, organisational, and ethical questions intersect.

Area of expertise

Psychotherapy, supervision, and consultancy. Relational and phenomenological approaches to psychotherapy; complex clinical supervision; reflective practice and consultancy in high-stakes and ethically demanding contexts; work with loss, finitude, and enduring difficulty where technique alone is insufficient.

Academic research and authorship. Author of Workplace Wellbeing: A Relational Approach (Routledge, 2020) and Philosophical Foundations of Psychotherapy: Radical Relationality (Routledge, 2024). Current and forthcoming work includes Entwined Selves (with philosopher Niall Keane, anticipated 2026), Living with What We Must (anticipated 2027), and an interview-based project on insomnia integrating phenomenological, clinical, and physiological perspectives.

Science teaching and research. Long-standing expertise in structural, mechanistic, and organometallic chemistry. Ongoing teaching and supervision of MSc and postgraduate research students, alongside active research engagement with further work in development for Dalton Transactions.

Publications

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