Dr. Larrabee completed graduate degrees in philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, and The University of Toronto. She recently completed an M.A. in theology/spirituality at the Catholic Theological Union Chicago, as well as an eight-month internship on Spiritual Direction with the Loyola Jesuits. She served as Director of DePaul's Women's Studies Program in the mid-eighties and was Director of DePaul's Peace, Justice, & Conflict Studies B.A Program, established in January 2010 with the collaboration of its faculty. She edited An Ethic of Care, has published articles in phenomenology, Husserl studies, feminism, Asian philosophy, trauma studies, and gender and critical race and mixed race studies. She is currently researching theories of the self within multiple cultural contexts, comparative spiritual practices, and theologies of trauma, resistance, and healing. She has taught courses in feminist ethics and epistemology, phenomenologies of theory development, and conflict, trauma, and resilience studies; Husserl's temporality theory, Ideas, Crisis, and genetic phenomenology; postmodernism and the critique of binarism; formal logic; and Asian philosophies (especially Yogacara and Socially Engaged Buddhism).
Her most recent work includes: “Opening the Process, Processing the Opening: A Modality of ‘Focusing-into-Creative Expression’,” in Senses of Focusing, Vol. I, ed. Nikolaos Kypriotakis and Judy Moore (Greece: Eurasia Publications, 2021); “Wholebody Focusing and the Arts for Freedom,” The International Focusing Conference, March 2019, Merida, Mexico; “Creating with Your WholeSelf by Means of a Gendlinist ‘Open Process Focusing’,” “Critical Phenomenology and the Limits of Critical Buddhism: Edmund Husserl’s Self-reflective Strategies,” invited for a conference, “Husserl in Japan,” co-sponsored by the Shizuoka University and University of Nebraska Omaha, May 30-31, 2019.
The Second Annual Felt Sense Conference, Hebrew Union College, New York City, May 2019; “The Salt Doll and the Sea: Discovering the Beings We Are, with Deleuze, Sartre, and Buddha,” Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, Seattle University, September 2019; “Critical Phenomenology and the Reflective Strategies of Edmund Husserl: Comparison of an Example from Buddhist Scholarship,” Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Duquesne University, October 2019.
“Are You a Unit or a Process? How This Might Matter for Spirituality Studies,” Symposium of the Eugene Gendlin Center for Experiential Philosophy and Psychology, March (online), 2021; “Listening-into-Silence to a Silence beyond Silence,” Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, University of San Francisco, October 2022; “Listening-into-Silence: A Silence beyond Silence?” Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences,” St Louis University, January 2023; “Searching for a Deepest Home Where It Isn’t: Hearth, Heart, and Healing,” Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, May 24-27, 2023, at the Jesuit University in Bogotá Colombia, the Pontifical Universidad Javeriana; “Searching for a Deepest Home: Towards a Neuro-Phenomenology of Healing,” Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, University of San Francisco, September 2023; “What Way Brings the One or the Many? – A Question for Buddhists and Meister Eckhart,” Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy University of San Francisco, November 2023; “On Trauma and Healing: Toward a Phenomenology of Home, Heart, and Community,” East/West Philosophy @ University of Hawai’i Honolulu, East West Center, May 2024.
She is certified to give Experiential Focusing training (focusing.org) and its related practices of Thinking at the Edge, dream work, and Indigenous trauma work; and she trains trainers in Wholebody Focusing (see Kevin McEvenue) as a certified Coordinator with the International Focusing Institute. She is a certified Practitioner in STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) from Eastern Mennonite University. She brings workshops on psychosocial wellness and resilience through focusing and dramatic arts to groups in Haiti (Concern Worldwide; Lakou Lapè) and Colombia and most recently to teenagers at Chicago’s Precious Blood Ministry for Reconciliation (summer 2016), using Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed for learning conflict transformation tools. She worked for a number of years in DePaul’s faculty governance in the 80s through 90s: Faculty Council President and Secretary; Chair of FC committees on Academic Policy, Status of Faculty, and the Faculty Handbook (including the multi-year Holtschneider Presidential Handbook Taskforce), as well as taskforce groups on establishing a women’s center and a University office on diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism. She did work at strategic planning retreats for Academic Affairs in the 1980s and for Faculty Council; as well as acting as co-organizer of the initial faculty group for the Sister Helen Prejean Week 2012 and subsequent visits.