User:Seelex/The Foundation for Psychocultural Research

The Foundation for Psychocultural Research

The Foundation for Psychocultural Research (FPR) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that supports and advances interdisciplinary research and scholarship at the intersection of biology, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and related fields, with an emphasis on psychocultural factors.

History
The FPR was founded in December 1999 with a gift from Robert B. Lemelson, a documentary filmmaker and psychological anthropologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Dr. Lemelson is a research anthropologist in the Center for Culture and Health at the Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and a lecturer in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychology at UCLA. His research interests are Southeast-Asian studies, psychological anthropology, and transcultural psychiatry, with an emphasis on personal experience, culture, and mental illness in Indonesia and the United States. He is also the founder and CEO of Elemental Productions, an ethnographic film production company. He is the producer, writer, and director of 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.

Activities
The FPR is a key supporter of the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development (CBD) and the FPR-Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development. The FPR CBD programs foster integrative, cross-disciplinary research that focuses on how culture and context interact with brain development.

In addition, through a series of workshops, conferences, the FPR brings together scholars, researchers, and clinicians with overlapping interests to think across disciplinary boundaries and address issues of fundamental clinical and social concern. Several participants from these meetings have contributed papers to two major volumes: Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2007), edited by cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, and physician/neuroscientist Mark Barad, and Formative Experiences: The Interaction of Caregiving, Culture, and Developmental Psychobiology (Cambridge University Press, 2010), edited by biocultural anthropologist Carol M. Worthman, developmental psychobiologist Paul M. Plotsky, child psychiatrist Daniel S. Schechter, and FPR program director Constance A. Cummings. A third volume is in progress based on the FPR’s 4th interdisciplinary conference, "Cultural and Biological Contexts of Psychiatric Disorder: Implications for Diagnosis and Treatment," which was held at UCLA in January 2010.