Dr Miltos Hadjiosif

Qualifications:

MA Hons (Edin); MSc (Edin); PsychD; CPsychol; HCPC Reg; FHEA

Position:

Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology

Department:

HAS - Health and Social Sciences

Telephone:

+441173287009

Email:

Miltos.Hadjiosif@uwe.ac.uk

About me

I studied Psychology and Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, where the seeds for my interdisciplinary approach to psychotherapy were planted.  I was involved in student radio and  worked in the music industry for several years, before undertaking a Doctorate in Psychotherapeutic & Counselling Psychology at the University of Surrey, on a full scholarship from the A.S. Onassis Foundation. 

I am trained in humanistic, psychodynamic, dialectical-behavioural (DBT), multi-systemic (MST), and narrative therapy and am a Level 3 EMDR practitioner. My core training and subsequent professional development reflect my commitment to the dialogue between relational and critical psychotherapy.  My scholarship is concerned with intersubjectivity, the psycho-social situatedness of healing practices, and decolonisation.  It welcomes and works towards critical interrogation of psychology's practices, and resists the subjugation of indigenous knowledge(s) and intuitive ways of being in the world.

I work on public engagement and knowledge exchange to bridge the gap between academia and the 'real world'.  I co-founded the Community Psychology Festival (2014) and led as Festival Organiser for the Bristol (2017), Edinburgh (2023), and Newport (2024) Festivals. I sat on the BPS Community Psychology Section Committee for 10 years and was elected Training Lead of the Division of Counselling Psychology Executive Committee. In those roles I developed/revised training standards and the national curriculum in line with decolonisation and reflexive pedagogy. I believe that counselling psychology has much to gain from community psychology and contemporary depth psychotherapy; as such I advocate for protecting the reflexive components of doctoral training which are currently under threat.

In the last 5 years I have moved towards systemic eco-psychotherapy, an emerging field born out of indigenous cosmologies and rituals, ecological awakening, and deep appreciation of Nature and non-human agents. I enacted this work as Editor-in-Chief of Counselling Psychology Review and various other posts and professional endeavors, including consultancy for businesses in the UK and Europe.      

At UWE I supervise research and teach on our highly regarded Professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology. I lead 'Principles of Counselling & Psychotherapy', a final year undergraduate Module I designed to demonstrate the value of relational teaching and research/developments from the disciplines outlined above. I have been nominated for the 'Outstanding Teaching Award' several times and won the BPS Division of Counselling Psychology 'Best Supervisor/Mentor' Award (2019). 

I lead UWE's Critical Autoethnography Network and passionately believe that this orientation to scholarship holds enormous untapped potential.  This network brings together staff, students, activists and artists and has been shaped by decolonisation and queer praxis. You can see a sample of this work in the cover story for The Psychologist magazine. I also (proudly and irreverently) bring these traditions to social events and UWE Psychology's vibrant social environment.  

Area of expertise

In the past, I conducted experimental and qualitative research investigating narrative and discourse. I turned to Autoethnography and Creative-Relational inquiry due to my disillusionment with publication practices and psychology's obsession with facts, method, and outcome. My scholarship combines counselling and community psychology in order to understand therapeutic aspects of various cultural activities and open up spaces for the de-professionalisation of healing practices.  I have  researched the ways in which psychotherapy is discursively constructed as expert knowledge and the narrative construction of the 'wounded healer' archetype. I am currently interested in perspectives that bring 'soul' to community development and wonder what must be done to enable a more soulful and sustainable academia. I draw on shamanic and post-colonial perspectives and am keen to develop collaborations striving towards critical pedagogy, social justice, and relational teaching. I hold my own experiences of being a carer and a service user near in my research and teaching.

I am also interested in influencing the direction that the profession of counselling psychology moves towards. I co-edited a special edition of the Counselling Psychology Review (with Dr May Karlsen) which collected stories of psychotherapists' development in an attempt to widen prospective trainees' expectations of the kind of experience(s) and skills they need in order to get on professional training courses.  More recently, I co-edited (with Hazel Morfett) the first 'Greatest Hits' edition of Counselling Psychology Review and re-launched the journal to reflect the areas of expertise outlined earlier.  

I supervise doctoral research using Critical Autoethnography and work closely with my students and colleagues as we navigate together this exciting methodology to deliver 'research with feeling' that speaks to the audiences it is intended for. I am open to PhD supervision enquiries. Some of the recent doctoral projects I have supervised include:

Dr Paisley McManus (2025). Duty-Duty: An Autoethnography on learning how to move along entangled caring pathways.

Dr Charlene Thomson (2024). Exploring the Aventine: An autoethnography on making sense of immersive daydreaming in the context of developmental trauma.

Dr Amelia Ince (2023). Bearing the discomfort: An Autoethnography on Weltschmerz.

Dr Jennifer Martin (2023). An Autoethnographic exploration of emergent therapeutic qualities in the art of Drag.

Dr Alice Horton (2022). Gaining Prescription Rights: A qualitative survey mapping the views of UK Counselling and Clinical Psychologists.

Publications

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