Editorial team

Editorial team

Editor-in-chief

Shelja Sen is narrative therapist, writer and co-founder of Children First, New Delhi. Her latest book is Reclaim Your Life and she is also a columnist with a national newspaper, Indian Express. Shelja has worked as a narrative practitioner and teacher for over 20 years in various contexts in the UK and India. She is an international faculty member at Dulwich Centre, Adelaide, and a clinical tutor at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Shelja is a curator of the unique skills, expertise and know-how of the children, young people and families she has the honour of working with, and is committed to building innovative, culturally aligned, ethical practices using a feminist intersectional lens.

  • Children First Institute of Child and Adolescent Mental Health
  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne

Senior editor

David Denborough works as a community worker, teacher and writer/editor at Dulwich Centre. He is particularly interested in cross-cultural partnerships that limit the chances of psychological colonisation and create possibilities for cross-cultural inventions. He is also vitally interested in how collective narrative practices can spark and/or sustain social movement and in projects that respond to racism and seek to strengthen social cohesion and inclusion.
David is the coordinator of the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work at The University of Melbourne where also supervises postgraduate researchers.

Editorial consultant

Cheryl White is the Director of Dulwich Centre and the founder of Dulwich Centre Publications where she works as publisher, editor, teacher, training co-ordinator, conference host and initiator of projects. Her own books include A memory book for the field of narrative practice and Conversations about gender, culture, violence and narrative practice: Stories of hope and complexity from women of many cultures. Cheryl is particularly interested in finding ways to support the work of practitioners in difficult and challenging contexts.
  • Dulwich Centre

Managing editor

Claire Nettle is a researcher and editor with a background in community work and academic publishing. She is an honorary clinical fellow at The University of Melbourne where she teaches research methods in the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Claire’s research has highlighted community-based responses to climate change and insider knowledges in environmental social movements. She is author of Community gardening as social action (Routledge).

Editorial board

Lúcia Helena Abdalla is a narrative therapist who works with children, young people, couples and families in a private clinic, and is also a director of Recycling Minds, where she develops community-work projects with teenagers, young people, families, teachers and community leaders who live in disadvantaged communities in extreme vulnerability.
Makungu M. Akinyela is a licensed marriage and family therapist in practice in Atlanta, Georgia, and an associate professor in the Africana Studies Department at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is a clinical fellow and an approved supervisor of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. As a scholar and a therapist, Makungu has been a committed social justice organiser for over 40 years, focused on struggles for human rights and justice for Black people in the United States and the African diaspora. His research and writing addresses cultural democracy and mental health care; cultural domination and therapeutic resistance; reparations and the role of mental health workers in repairing oppressions wounds and African-centred family therapy.
  • Georgia State University
Shuang Cao (she/her) is a narrative practitioner and a counsellor from China, and a social work student in Adelaide.
  • Private practice
  • Dulwich Centre
Carlos Alexis Chimpén López is founder and president of Asociación Española de Terapia Narrativa and director of the Master in Narrative Therapy at the Universidad de Extremadura.
Carlos Clavijo López is a psychotherapist working with adults and couples in private practice and providing consultancy on responses to intimate partner violence to community organisations and the primary health sector. He is also associate professor at Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, teaching clinical psychology at undergraduate and graduate level and conducting research in clinical psychology.
  • Universidad de Valparaíso
  • Private practice
Mehmet Dinç is head of psychology at Hasan Kalyoncu University in Turkey.
Tileah Drahm-Butler is a Kullilli and Yidinji woman. She is an emergency department social worker and PhD candidate with over 20 years’ experience working across Aboriginal health and social and emotional wellbeing.
  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne
  • Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health
  • Lowitja Institute
  • Indigenous Allied Health Australia
  • Cairns Hinterland Hospital Health Service- Queensland Health
Jill Faulkner is an independent practitioner, supervisor and psychotherapist, and a social justice storyteller.
  • Private practice
Erling is a family therapist at the ROBUST child and family therapy Clinic in Oslo – Norway’s only all narrative therapy clinic. He has practiced narrative therapy since 2005 and been involved in supervision and teaching for many years, including in the Master of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice program at VID Specialized University in Oslo. He works with children, youth and their families suffering with a wide range of difficulties including high conflicts, and social, cultural and mental health issues of various kinds. He work is published in Focus på Familien – the Scandinavian journal of family therapy.
Jill Freedman is director of Evanston Family Therapy Center in North America, where she teaches narrative therapy and has a therapy and consulting practice.
  • Evanston Family Therapy Center
  • Dulwich Centre

Sekneh Hammoud (she/her) is a narrative therapist and senior registered psychologist with over 20 years of national and international experience across private, public and academic settings. Based on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, Sekneh has an extensive background in therapy, teaching, consultancy and supervision, making significant contributions in diverse contexts.

  • Dulwich Centre
  • Constellation Therapy
  • NorthPsych
Mark Hayward works as a family therapist and is founding director of the UK Institute of Family Therapy.
  • Institute of Narrative Therapy
  • Dulwich Centre
Kristina Lainson is a senior counsellor/narrative therapist at Totally Psyched! Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Warkworth, Aotearoa; an honorary clinical tutor at The University of Melbourne; and a registered member of New Zealand Association of Counsellors/Te Roopu Kaiwhiriwhiri o Aotearoa.
  • Dulwich Centre
  • Re-authoring Teaching
  • The University of Melbourne
  • The Flaherty
  • International Documentary Association
  • VCA Film and Television
Zan Maeder (they/them) is a narrative practitioner and doula working in alternative practice on Kaurna land.
  • Dulwich Centre
  • Private practice
  • zanmaeder.com
Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo is an internationally renowned psychologist and narrative therapist who has spent much of her career developing local, culturally appropriate psychosocial healing practices and methodologies. Ncazelo has worked extensively with children, youth, women, families and communities in the context of HIV and AIDS, poverty and conflict in East and Southern Africa.
David Nylund is a professor of social work at California State University Sacramento, clinical director/supervisor of the Gender Health Centre, and a faculty member of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. In addition, he is a clinical supervisor at La Familia Counseling Centre in Sacramento. David is part of the Sacramento Narrative Therapy Collective where he provides consultation and therapy.

Loretta Pederson works as a narrative therapist, supervisor and teacher. Based in Western Sydney, on the unceded lands of the Dharug people, Loretta works across Australia using an online platform. Loretta has worked with Dulwich Centre and The University of Melbourne since 2015. She is the author of the book Honouring resistance and building solidarity: Feminism and narrative practice (2024).

  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne
  • Private practice
marcelo polanco nació del cuerpo-tierra no cedida y explotada de la comunidad Muisca, bajo el dominio del Estado-Nación Colombia. As a family therapist in the United States, me beneficio financieramente de mi trabajo decolonial, liberatorio, y de justicia social at San Diego State University, located in unceded Kumeyaay land.
Sara Portnoy works at University College Hospital with children and young people who have complex medical conditions. She also works on a community paediatric palliative care and bereavement team that covers three of London’s boroughs. Sara is affiliated with SLOW, which stands for Surviving the Loss of Our World – it is a community-based parent support group run by bereaved parents for bereaved parents.
  • University College London Hospital
  • Life Force community paediatric palliative care and bereavement team
  • SLOW (Surviving the Loss of Our World) parent support group
  • https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3907-1458
Hawre Rasool Radha is an experienced psychologist based in Kurdistan, Iraq. Hawre Rasool has dedicated 11 years to working with the Jiyan Foundation.
  • Jiyan Foundation
Marnie Sather works as a narrative therapist in Melbourne, Autralia.
  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne
Maya Sen works as a narrative therapist at the Heal Grow Thrive Foundation, a local psychotherapy service in Kolkata , India, and as a consultant with Kolkata Sanved supporting teaching and training initiatives on mental health. Maya is part of the international faculty at Dulwich Centre and is a clinical tutor with The University of Melbourne.
  • Heal Grow Thrive Foundation
  • Kolkata Sanved
  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne
Tiffany Sostar is a nonbinary, queer (bisexual), disabled, nonmonogamous white settler narrative practitioner and community worker. They are currently working on projects related to supporting trans lives, feeling climate anguish, and being disabled in an ableist world.
I am a social work practitioner working with people facing terminal illness in Singapore at Cancer Society’s home hospice. I enjoy the journey of co-researching and collaborating with people to author their preferred life narratives and practices within their communities.
  • Singapore Cancer Society Psychosocial Services
  • University of Hong Kong
  • Hong Kong Family Welfare Society
  • Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications
  • Hong Kong Community College
  • Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5200-4922
Sabine Vermeire is a trainer, systemic and narrative psychotherapist and supervisor at the Interactie-Academie VZW, a training and therapy centre in Antwerp, Belgium. For more than 30 years she has worked with children and families in multi-stress contexts and trauma.
Manja’s interests include thinking and writing about, and working alongside of, individuals and communities recovering from the adverse effects of patriarchal, colonial, ableist, queer-phobic and transphobic systems of dominance. She is a member of the Dulwich Centre’s Australian faculty and currently practices independently as a narrative therapist.
  • Private practice
  • Dulwich Centre
  • The University of Melbourne
Kaethe Weingarten formerly on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, directs the Witness to Witness Program (W2W), whose goal is to help the helpers who work with vulnerable populations. She has published six books and over 100 articles, blogs and essays. She and her collaborator apply the witnessing model to their choreography in public spaces with elder dancers.
  • Migrant Clinicians Network
  • American Family Therapy Academy
  • Impromptu No Tutu Ensemble
Angel Yuen works as a narrative therapist, supervisor, teacher and consultant in alternative-private practice in the Greater Toronto Area and is one of the co-founders of the Narrative Therapy Centre. She is the author of the book Pathways beyond despair: Re-authoring lives of young people through narrative therapy (2019).