Celia Kitzinger
Professor Celia Kitzinger began her career in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford , and – frustrated with the narrow vision of humanity promoted by experimentalists - moved to Reading University in order to research sexuality from a social psychological perspective. She then worked for a couple of years each in Education (University of Leicester), Psychology (University of East London) and Nursing (University of Surrey), eventually settling for ten years in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. After a year-long visiting appointment at the University of California at Los Angles Celia returned to the UK to York where she has worked for more than 10 years.
“My sister and colleague Professor Jenny Kitzinger (Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies, Cardiff University) and I are co-Directors of the York-Cardiff Chronic Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre. We started our research after our sister, Polly, was very severely brain injured in a car accident in March 2009 and was in a vegetative and then minimally conscious state for two years. (She is now fully conscious with profound brain damage and physical disabilities.) The Centre now involves 18 staff across the two universities and is exploring long-term coma from an interdisciplinary perspective, including philosophy, economics, history, law and literature.”