Deborah Britzman


Deborah P. Britzman is a professor and a practicing psychoanalyst at York University. Britzman's research connects psychoanalysis with contemporary pedagogy, teacher education, social inequality, problems of intolerance and historical crisis.

Early life and education

Britzman completed her undergraduate degree in teaching at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She then taught high school English for seven years. Britzman completed a master's degree in Reading and Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts and earned her doctoral degree in ethnographic research in 1985.

Career

Britzman was hired as an Assistant Professor at Binghamton University. Seven years after she began teaching at Binghamton, she moved to Canada to teach at York University in Toronto, where she has been since 1992.
Britzman’s book Freud and Education, published in 2011 by Routledge Press explores key controversies of education through a Freudian approach. It defines how fundamental Freudian concepts such as the psychical apparatus, the drives, the unconscious, and the development of morality are related to the field of education.
In 2013 Britzman was working on a three-year research project titled "the emotional world of teaching: A psychoanalytic inquiry." The project is a study of the psychology of teaching and mental health. She was later named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Two years later, she was awarded the 2015 Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.
In 2016, she was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Association for Teacher Education. The next year, she was named a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Pedagogy and Psycho-Social Transformations. She was also recognized by York as a University Research Leader.

Awards

Britzman was the first Faculty of Education member to be honoured with the title of York University Distinguished Research Professor.