Draft:Susan Rowland

• Comment: The subject does not appear to meet any of the criteria under WP:NPROF, if she does then the evidence needs to brought out / sourced. Otherwise it's probably best to consider WP:NAUTHOR, which is often interpreted as "two books, two book reviews each". ChrysGalley (talk) 09:23, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

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Susan Rowland is a Jungian scholar, literary critic, and author whose work focuses on analytical psychology, literature, feminism, ecology, and the arts. She is Professor of Writing and Depth Psychology and Core Faculty and Advisor in Research and the Humanities at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her research has been recognised as making a profound impact on the fields of analytical psychology and post-Jungian Studies. For this she has won the prestigious 2023 C.G. Jung Award. She is also a succesfull author of mystery novels about undervalued women. To date, Rowland has written and edited ten scholarly books and four novels. She is married to the American poet Joel Weishaus.

Early life and education

Rowland was born in London, United Kingdom. She began her education in 1981 at the University of Oxford where she was admitted to Pembroke College. She has commented that she chose Pembroke due to statistics that suggested the College took on many students of English. Unbeknownst to her she was part of a huge change in the College as it was only the third year that women were admitted. In 1985, she graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA Hons in English Language and Literature. A year later she received her PGCE in English Secondary Teaching from the same university. She continued her education at the University of London where she received her MA in Modern English Literature with distinction in 1990. Her PhD in English was completed in 1996 at the University of Newcastle.

Career

The year she completed her PhD she began as a Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. Following this, Rowland was appointed in a full-time permanent role as Founder and Chair of the MA by Research at the University of Greenwich's School of Humanities. She held this position from 2008 until 2010. When she moved to the Pacifica Graduate Institute, she was appointed Chair of the MA Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life. Since then she has held different positions at the institute and teaches in the MA Depth Psychology and Creativity and the Doctoral Program in Jungian and Archetypal Studies.

Rowland has held highest-level elected positions at academic societies in her field. She was Past President of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies (JSSS) and the first Chair of the International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS). She is on the editorial board of academic journals including The International Journal for Jungian Studies, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, CLUES: A Journal of Detection and the International Journal of Mythological Studies.

Scholarship

Rowland's work brings Jungian and post-Jungian thought into dialogue with literary theory, feminist criticism, ecocriticism, myth studies, and the arts. Her scholarship has examined the literary dimensions of Carl Jung's writing, Jungian approaches to literature and culture, and the role of imagination and symbol in ecological and artistic inquiry.

In Jung as a Writer (2005), Rowland analyzed Jung's texts through literary theory and argued for the importance of narrative, metaphor, and genre in Jung's psychology. In The Ecocritical Psyche (2012), she connected Jungian thought with ecocriticism and evolutionary complexity, arguing for a renewed relationship between psyche, literature, and the non-human world.

Jungian arts-based research

Rowland is associated with the development of Jungian arts-based research (JABR), an approach that combines Jungian and post-Jungian psychology with arts-based research methods.

In collaboration with Joel Weishaus, she published Jungian Arts-Based Research and "The Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico" (2021), which presents JABR as a transdisciplinary method drawing on creativity, symbol, active imagination, and the unconscious in the production of knowledge.

A review of Jung as a Writer was published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology.

Author of mystery novels

As a novelist Rowland is the author of the Mary Wandwalker Mystery series. The Sacred Well Murders (2022), The Alchemy Fire Murder (2023), Murder on Family Grounds (2024), and The Swan Lake Murders (2025) were published by Chiron Publications. In 2024, readers on Goodreads ranked Muder on Family Grounds as the most highly esteemed thriller book of all time.

Selected scholarly works

• Jungian Arts-Based Research and the Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico (with Joel Weishaus, Routledge, 2021)
• The Sleuth and the Goddess: Hestia, Athena, Artemis and Aphrodite in Women's Detective Fiction (Routledge, 2019)
• Remembering Dionysus: Revisioning Psychology and Literature in C.G. Jung and James Hillman (Routledge, 2016)
• The Ecocritical Psyche: Literature, Complexity, Evolution and Jung (Routledge, 2012)
• C.G. Jung and the Humanities (Routledge, 2010)
• Psyche and the Arts (editor, Routledge, 2008)
• Jung as a Writer (Routledge, 2005)
• Jung: A Feminist Revision (Polity, 2002)
• From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell (Palgrave, 2001)
• C.G. Jung and Literary Theory (Palgrave, 1999)