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Lara Sheehi

Links
larasheehi.com

Lara Sheehi is a President’s Fellow at UC Davis, a licensed clinical psychologist, and the host of the Psychic Militancy podcast. Lara’s work focuses on psychoanalysis, the psychic refusals central to liberation struggles and life-making in the Global South, the psychic dimensions of resistance and revolution, and critical Zionism studies. She is the author of From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto, 2026) and co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine  (Routledge, 2022). Lara is a member of the founding collective for the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and is on the advisory board for  Forensic Architecture.

A photo of Lara Sheehi, a woman with long dark brown curly hair, olive skin, and dark hazel eyes. She wears a black vest, gold hoop earring, and a stud nose piercing.

Artist Events

A grainy black and white film still from the 60s: Depicting a group of Reunionese activists. The crowd is mainly men, dressed in loose shirts and sun hats. They hold their fists in the air in celebration and are smiling.
13 November 2026, 19:00

Undefeated Dreams of Communism in the Indian Ocean

Françoise Vergès Lara Sheehi

An evening with one of the great decolonial feminist thinkers, sharing rarely seen films commissioned by her father, as leader of the Communist Party of Réunion, that celebrate the island’s insurgent anti-colonial resistance.

Episode 12: From the Rivers to the Seas
A brightly lit landscape photo. In the foreground there’s a coniferous tree covered in pine cones. Beyond that there is a sparse landscape covered in shrubs and conifers. In the distance a city is visible, the city is made up of identical condominiums and tower blocks, with sky scrapers at the skyline jutting into a grey-blue sky.
12 November 2026, 10:30

A Conference of Butterflies

Anti-Denialist Museum of Palestine Nasser Abourahme Carmel Alabassi Ayreen Anastas Mahmoud Alshaer Rene Gabri Avery F. Gordon Michel Khleifi David Lloyd Peter Makhlouf Nicholas Mirzoeff Majdal Nateel Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Lara Sheehi Françoise Vergès Additional Contributors

This edition of the Conference of Butterflies asks contributors to share words, notions, practices which nourish or obstruct our movements from perceiving and abolishing all the forces, forms, institutions maintaining the planetary regime of ongoing Nakba.

Episode 12: From the Rivers to the Seas
A photo of Nadera, a light brown skinned woman with brown hair and eyes. She looks stateswoman-like, wearing a black blazer, simple gold jewellery, and chic make-up.
12 November 2026, 20:50

Countertechnologies of life making in Palestine, for Palestine

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Lara Sheehi

Palestinian Feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kervorkian sits down with psychoanalyst and author Lara Sheehi to discuss some of Nadera’s other vital concepts including the ideas of ‘overkilling’ and ‘unchilding’, which are fundamental to understanding Palestinian experience today.

Episode 12: From the Rivers to the Seas
A posterised halftone image of trees against a red, sky background.
11 November 2026, 19:00

On the Necessity of Psychic Militancy

Lara Sheehi Hannah Proctor

Lara explodes the naïve claim to neutrality of normative psychiatric care. Her concept of ‘psychic intrusions’ helps to identify the ways power seeks to mould the consciousness of the people it  subjugates. Her notion of ‘psychic militancy’ maps the resistance to such attempts.

 

Episode 12: From the Rivers to the Seas