Robert B. Lemelson, Ph.D.

Assistant Research Anthropologist, UCLA Semel Institute
 

Contact Information

UCLA Department of Psychology
1285 Franz Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563
On-campus mail: 156304
Tel: (310) 454-5904
Fax: (310) 454-1417
E-mail: lemelson@ucla.edu


Biosketch

 

An anthropologist who received his master's degree from the University of Chicago and his doctoral degree from the University of California-Los Angeles, Dr. Robert Lemelson is currently a research anthropologist in Center for Culture and Health, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute, and Lecturer in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychology at UCLA. He was a Fulbright scholar in Indonesia in 1996-97. He has worked for the World Health Organization and is additionally trained as a clinical psychologist. His areas of specialty are Southeast-Asian studies, psychological anthropology, and transcultural psychiatry.

Dr. Lemelson has recently published in the journals Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Transcultural Psychiatry, among others. His co-edited volume, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives, was published in early 2007 by Cambridge University Press.

As a documentary filmmaker and psychological anthropologist, Dr. Lemelson's work focuses on personal experience, culture, and mental illness in Indonesia and the United States. He has been conducting anthropological research in Indonesia since 1993. Dr. Lemelson has just completed his most recent film entitled 40 Years of Silence: an Indonesian Tragedy, a feature length documentary about the traumatic long-term effects of Indonesia's 1965 mass killings on four families. He is currently re-editing Movements and Madness: Gusti Ayu, a documentary on a young Balinese woman's struggle with Tourette's syndrome. He is also the CEO and founder of Elemental Productions.

Dr. Lemelson is the founder and the president of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research (The FPR), whose mission is to advance and support interdisciplinary research and training in neuroscience, psychiatry, and anthropology. Dr. Lemelson also serves as a director, co-Vice President and Secretary of The Lemelson Foundation, a family foundation whose mission is to promote innovation and invention in American society and the developing world. Dr Lemelson also supports the UCLA Indonesian Studies Program, which was created in 2008. It is part of UCLA's Center for Southeast Asian Studies, which is housed at the UCLA International Institute.


 

Selected References

Kirmayer, L. J., Lemelson, R., Barad, M. (Eds.) (2007) Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lemelson R. (2004) "Traditional Healing and it's Discontents: Efficacy and Traditional Therapies of Neuropsychiatric Disorders in Bali, in Medical Anthropology Quarterly 18(1):48-76.

Lemelson R, Suryani L.K. (2003) "Cultural Formulation of Psychiatric Diagnoses: The Spirits, Penyakit Ngeb and the Social Suppression Of Memory: A Complex Clinical Case from Bali", submitted to Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

Lemelson R. (2003) "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Bali: The Cultural Shaping of a Neuropsychiatric Disorder" in Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol.40(3) (pp.377-408)

Lemelson R. (2001) "Strange Maladies," Psychology Today, December 2001

Ethnographic Films
40 Years of Silence: an Indonesian Tragedy
Movements and Madness: Gusti Ayu