ROOM’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025
/ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025 for Initiating Contemporary Psychoanalytic Discussions and Actions
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Nonprofit ROOM’s Platform Places a Psychoanalytic Lens on Pressing Issues and Extends Psychoanalytic Action into the Public Sphere
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 -- The Sigourney Award annually bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize to honor outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past 10 years. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 11 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA), an organization offering an innovative free digital forum and platform, as one of four recipients whose work wins The Sigourney Award-2025.
“As a living agora, ROOM has created a space for contemporary discussions, making the word ‘action’ possible in the psychoanalytical field, where reflection traditionally prevails. By engaging artists, poets, and voices from diverse disciplines, it dynamically expands psychoanalytic thought well beyond the clinical setting,” says Dr. Deutsch.
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA)
Brilliantly curated and edited, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action is a global, free digital forum and platform that has illuminated and forged new connections between psychoanalysis and the most pressing social, political, and cultural issues facing the contemporary world. Led by Hattie Myers, PhD, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, ROOM’s wide-ranging collection of essays, creative writing, memoirs, poetry, art, and community projects place a psychoanalytic lens on contemporary challenges while embodying a uniquely new analytic modality for collective connection and societal change.
ROOM, produced collaboratively by more than 30 volunteers, serves as a valued tool for education and public scholarship, having evolved beyond its original format to produce films, books, events, and collaborative educational programming. These initiatives further expand knowledge of psychoanalysis and highlight its potential applications across diverse fields. By working on multiple levels, psychoanalytic action within ROOM is enhanced through the inclusion of visual artists whose contributions bring nonverbal and affective power to each publication. The featured artists’ statements not only illuminate their own practices but also articulate the synergy between their visual work and the analytic content of each issue.
Conceived of just days after the 2016 U.S. presidential election as an agent of community building, ROOM now reaches readers in more than 160 countries. Each issue of ROOM offers a window through which readers experience how culture and politics impact us personally, and how our psychology affects our environment and political reality. ROOM is published three times a year, is available free online and in print for purchase. Following each issue, an international roundtable allows readers and authors to deepen the conversation together. Additionally, ROOM produces a biweekly podcast featuring contributors to the magazine.
When Myers was asked to describe ROOM’s impact, she shared the words Dr. Karim Dajani offered during a gala speech. “Naguib Mahfouz the Egyptian Nobel prize winner said, ‘Happiness lies in the crevices of tragedy like diamonds lie in the crevices of the earth.’ ROOM shines a light in the crevices where forgotten wisdom, marginalized individuals, and repressed ideas are brought back into the fold for all to see, learn from, and enjoy. I’m so proud to be a part of that effort."