Stephen Frosh is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. He is one of the founders of Psychosocial Studies in the UK, bringing together sociological and psychological (especially psychoanalytic) perspectives. He has published over twenty books as well as over 150 academic articles. He is co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies (2024) and the Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Jewish Studies (2025).

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/authors/frosh-stephen?srsltid=AfmBOop_OsT5eWn2ESAS3tpnkQt9rjpgSDxih_BcQmzMU9GW2_FzsjiV

Noreen Giffney specialises in the fields of psychoanalysis; psychosocial studies; the arts, culture and mental health/creative health; and gender and sexuality studies. She is a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), a member of the Advisory Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS), a member of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy (IAPF), and a fully-accredited clinical member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (IFPP) and the Psychoanalytic Section of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP).

https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/n-giffney

Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska explores how AI is reshaping the dynamics of intimacy and transference in her forthcoming book AI Intimacy and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2026) and in an article for the most recent issue of New Associations.

As an author, theorist and academic, Agnieszka has published many books around psychoanlysis, creativity and cinema. Most recently, she published The Ethics of Documentary Film in 2025, Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film in 2023 and edited Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness in 2020. She’s also authored more short-form pieces that fuse psychoanalysis and film like her ‘Revenge of a Cool Girl’ essay for Mai Feminism (2019) and her video essay ‘Inception – A Surrealist Tale About Lost Love’ for [in]Transition (2017).

Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska explores how AI is reshaping the dynamics of intimacy and transference. In her forthcoming book AI Intimacy and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2026) and in her recent TEDx talk, she argues that encounters with large language models create a new zone of “techno-transference”, where shame, desire and projection are played out with a non-sentient yet symbolically responsive Other. Rather than treating these relationships as pathologies, her work invites psychoanalysis to take them seriously as cultural and clinical phenomena, asking what they reveal about vulnerability, care and the ethics of relating in the digital age. Agnieszka is also the founder of Relational AI Studies and Coaching (TM), a new field that explores the ethics behind human-AI relationships.

Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska authored an article on this subject for our latest issue of New Associations, the BPC’s flagship magazine. Her article ‘AI and Techno-Transference’ explores the emotional and linguistic ramifications of humans building relationships with AI. She draws on Lacanian thinking around language and the Symbolic to remind us that when communicating with AI “There is no body across from you, no breathing presence, no history of pain you are invited to respond and deal with”.

https://www.routledge.com/AI-Intimacy-and-Psychoanalysis/Piotrowska/p/book/9781041169536