While Dulwich Centre is located in Adelaide, Australia, you can find our team members in many different parts of the world. Different faculty members and community workers are engaged in diverse projects.
Adelaide Team
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. Cheryl is the author/co-editor of various books, including A memory book for the field of narrative practice and Conversations about gender, culture, violence & narrative practice: Stories of hope and complexity from women of many cultures. More information about the work of Dulwich Centre Publications can be found in the book A community of ideas: Behind the scenes. Cheryl is particularly interested in finding ways to support the work of practitioners in difficult and challenging contexts. She is the Secretary of the Dulwich Centre Foundation which is vitally interested in the interface between narrative therapy and work with wider groups and communities.
David Denborough works as a community worker, teacher and writer/editor for Dulwich Centre. He is particularly interested in cross-cultural partnerships which limit the chances of psychological colonization and create possibilities for cross-cultural inventions, such as the Team of Life Narrative Approach and Tree of Life (with Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo). These collective narrative methodologies seek to assist people to address the effects of traumatic experiences without having to speak directly about them.
David 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/inclusion. Recent teaching/community assignments have included Brazil, Palestine, Singapore, Austria, Brazil, Hong Kong, Kurdistan (Iraq), India, Canada, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile, South Africa and a number of Aboriginal Australian communities. David is also a coordinator of the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work with the University of Melbourne where he is also involved in supporting/supervising graduate researchers. His songs in response to current social issues have received airplay throughout Australia and Canada. His books/publications include:
- Do you want to hear a story? Adventures in collective narrative practice
- Retelling the stories of our lives: Everyday narrative therapy to draw inspiration and transform experience
- Collective narrative practice: Responding to individuals, groups, and communities who have experienced trauma
- Working with memory in the shadow of genocide: The narrative practices of Ibuka trauma counsellors
- Beyond the prison: Gathering dreams of freedom
- Team of Life: Offering young people a sporting chance (DVD)
- Strengthening Resistance: the use of narrative practices in working with genocide survivors (with Jill Freedman and Cheryl White)
- Queer counselling and narrative practice (editor)
- Family therapy: Exploring the field’s past, present and possible futures (editor)
- Trauma: Narrative responses to traumatic experience (editor)
Barbara Wingard has been involved with Dulwich Centre since 1994 when she played a key role in the Reclaiming our stories, reclaiming our lives‘ gathering for Aboriginal families who had lost a family member due to deaths in custody. Barbara was one of the first group of Aboriginal Health Workers trained in South Australia. She is the co-author, with Jane Lester, of the influential book Telling our stories in ways that make us stronger. Barbara is one of the teaching team of the Dulwich Centre Foundation. She also plays a key role in Dulwich Centre’s engagement in community projects. Barbara was named Elder of the Year (Female) in South Australia in 2008 and she is a current Commissioner for the Environmental Resources and Development Court.
Carolyn Markey has considerable experience and great interest in counselling children, young people, and their families or caregivers in relation to a broad range of problems that are affecting their lives. Carolyn has particular experience in the areas of family separation, effects of violence and abuse, school-related difficulties, and working with people affected by concerns about anxiety or depression. Carolyn also enjoys using narrative ideas in group settings; this has included groups about sole parenting, living with the effects of violence and abuse, or groups of men wanting to take responsibility for abusive actions. Carolyn also has considerable experience supervising other practitioners in narrative therapy. Alongside her counselling practice, Carolyn works with the Teaching Partnership at Dulwich Centre and has taught narrative therapy workshops in Adelaide, throughout Australia, and in Hong Kong.
Chris Dolman values and enjoys working with individuals, couples, children, and families who are responding to a broad range of problems and concerns in their lives and relationships. Chris works both in private practice and for a non-government organisation. In addition to having considerable experience in working with people facing issues of violence and abuse, he has worked with people around family separation, parenting, grief, addictions, mental health concerns, and relationship matters.
Jane Hales started work in reception at Dulwich Centre on 30 April 1984, and has very much enjoyed her time here being involved with the office work, typesetting and layout of the journals and books, general accounting, workshop and conference organising including travelling to Atlanta and Liverpool for the conferences, database management, managing bookstalls, and more! Currently Jane is working as an assistant to Cheryl White.
Carolynanha is an Adnyamathanha, Aboriginal person from the Northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia and currently works as a counselor and educator at the Cancer Council SA. She is passionate about supporting Aboriginal people to find ways of making changes around the way they are smoking. Carolynanha has been involved with narrative practices since 2005. She has a Diploma in Narrative Approaches for Aboriginal People (Counselling, Group and Community Work) and is a recent graduate of the Inaugural Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Carolynanha is involved with Dulwich Centre Foundation’s community projects.
Manja Visschedijk was born in the Netherlands and raised on Meru Country in an immigrant community in the Riverland region of South Australia. Manja’s family and cultural values fostered a passion for social justice early in life, later embracing feminist ideas and practices. Manja was recognised in the ACT Government Centenary Women’s Honour roll for her contribution as a women’s advocate and she remains committed to addressing issues of privilege, dominance and marginalisation. Manja has worked with individuals, couples, groups and communities over the past 35 years in a range of roles including counselling, advocacy, case-management, group work, community work, supervision and senior management. Manja is currently employed as a Counsellor Advocate with the Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance and Rehabilitation Service (STTARS) in Adelaide. Manja has been associated with the Dulwich Centre as a Graduate Advisor since graduating from the Inaugural Advanced Diploma in Narrative Therapy in 2002. She has previously taught Narrative ideas as part of the Canberra Narrative Collective in the early 2000’s, and more recently with the Australian Institute of Relationship Studies, on the Diploma of Counselling and Group Work course for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community workers.
Charlotte England has worked at Dulwich Centre since June 2018 as a member of the admin team, and as a Student Liaison for the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. She completed a Bachelor of Psychological Science in 2018 and is currently studying a Master of Human Rights.
National and International Faculty
Jill Freedman is director of Evanston Family Therapy Center in North America, where she teaches narrative therapy and has a therapy and consulting practice. Together with her partner, Gene Combs, she has authored three books: Symbol, story, and ceremony: Using metaphor in individual and family therapy, Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities and Narrative therapy with couples… and a whole lot more! and more than 30 book chapters and articles. She is an Honorary Associate of the Taos Institute and in 2009 was given the Innovative Contribution to Family Therapy Award by the American Family Therapy Academy. She teaches internationally.
Angel Yuen is a school social worker and private practitioner in the multicultural context of Toronto, Canada. She has a particular interest in finding and co-discovering hopeful and creative ways of responding to hardship. She is also a founding member and faculty of the Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto. In 2006 Angel joined the Dulwich Centre team to become a faculty member for their international courses. She is coeditor with Cheryl White of the 2007 book Conversations about gender, culture, violence and narrative practice: Stories of hope and complexity from women of many cultures.
Lorraine Hedtke (MSW, LCSW, PhD) is a professor at California State University San Bernardino, where she teaches school counselling and coordinates the program in Counselling and Guidance. Lorraine’s career has blended clinical practice and educational endeavor. She writes, researches, and teaches about social constructionist practices in conversations with the dying and the bereaved. She regularly teaches about death, dying, and bereavement and narrative therapy throughout the United States and internationally. She is an associate member of the Taos Institute in the US. Her articles have appeared in numerous professional and trade publications and newspapers. Along with John Winslade, she is the co-author of Re-membering lives: Conversations with the dying and the bereaved. Her children’s book, My grandmother is always with me, is co-authored with her daughter, Addison. Further information and articles can be found at www.rememberingpractices.com.
John Winslade is a Professor at California State University San Bernardino and also teaches part-time at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He has co-authored six books on narrative practice and was the founding managing editor of Explorations: An E-Journal of Narrative Practice.
Ruth Pluznick is the clinical director a public children’s mental health centre in Toronto and a senior faculty of Narrative Therapy Centre. For the past three years, Ruth and her colleague, Natasha Kis-Sines have participated in the ‘gathering stories ‘ project initiated by Dulwich Centre, developing narrative ideas and practices where a parent is experiencing mental health difficulties. Ruth’s agency, Oolagen Community Services, is also involved in a partnership with Dulwich Centre in an initiative designed to foster intergenerational alliances within the Tamil and other multicultural communities in Toronto and the Kite of Life exercise.
Sekneh Hammoud-Beckett is a Narrative Therapist and Registered Psychologist (MAPS) based in Sydney. For over a decade she was employed with the New South Wales Department of Health (Youth Mental Health) engaging in health promotion and therapeutic services for young people and their families. She also worked as a researcher with the Division of General Practitioners and a Consultant Psychologist for Twenty10, a NSW community service for young people and their families navigating diverse identities. In addition, Sekneh she was part of the teaching faculty for the Masters of Social Health and Postgraduate Applied Psychology Course at Macquarie University for ten years. Currently, Sekneh works in private practice providing therapy, consultancy, teaching and supervision. She has papers published, received media and parliamentary attention and given numerous talks both nationally and internationally exploring the relationship between sexuality, religiosity, and issues around gendered violence and racism. When not immersed in the therapeutic space, she is actively engaged in community advocacy roles. Sekneh enjoys the practitioners’ space and revels with an innovative and collaborative blend of creativity, social justice activism and narrative therapy with the people and communities she meets. Sekneh believes her ‘work is love made visible.’
The Palestinian Narrative Institute is based at the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) in Ramallah and provides narrative training and supervision in Arabic. Nihaya Abu Rayyan, Wael Dawabsha and Sahar Mohammad (pictured here in Egypt) are the three senior narrative teachers and supervisors. Dulwich Centre Foundation International works closely with the TRC and the Palestinian Narrative Institute.
Click for more information about these collaborations or the TRC.
David Newman lives and works in Sydney. He works part time in a psychiatric unit for young people and has an independent counselling practice through Charing Cross Narrative Therapy Centre. David has recently taught in Turkey, Hong Kong and Palestine. He is currently passionate about working with those who are struggling with suicidal experience, narrative approaches to mental health work and the possibilities of group work. He is the author of the influential paper ‘Rescuing the said from the saying of it: Living documentation in narrative therapy’. Click to contact David c/o Charing Cross Narrative Therapy Centre.
Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo is an educational psychologist and a narrative therapist with over ten years experience working with children and communities affected by and infected with HIV and AIDS in east and southern Africa. She currently works as an independent consultant/service provider providing services that include training and capacity development on child-centred, family, and community-focused approaches/ methodologies to help alleviate trauma and hardship. Ncazelo works with different organisations and government departments throughout Africa. In 2008, Ncazelo formed the Family Strengthening Center of Southern Africa which helps families cope with hardships in the context of HIV and AIDS, poverty, and conflict.
Tileah Drahm-Butler is an Aboriginal woman of the Darumbal/Kulilli and Wanyurr Majay Yidinji Nations of Queensland, Australia and lives in Cairns, North Queensland. Tileah is a social worker with a Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Tileah works in the emergency department of a busy regional hospital and is on the Dulwich Centre International Teaching Faculty where she leads the teaching of narrative therapy and community work through an Aboriginal lens in Australia and internationally. Tileah has also been appointed as Co-chair of Feminisms, Intersectionality and Narrative Practice at Dulwich Centre.
As well as enjoying these realms of Narrative Practice, Tileah is a beekeeper and enjoys camping, bushwalking and home decorating.
marcela polanco, originally from Bogotá, Colombia, lives and works in Monroe, Louisiana, U.S. She is part of the faculty team of the family therapy programs at University of Louisiana at Monroe. marcela’s clinical, teaching, supervision, and research work is inspired by a narrative practice framework. She is particularly interested in exploring decolonizing means by which to renew narrative practices to maintain cultural solidarity, in her case, to her Colombian/Latin American perspectives. Other of her interests includes the development of narrative inquiries informed by cultural and linguistic sensitivities learned from postmodern translation studies, bilinguality, and Latin American magical realism. This is, to contribute to people, their families, and their communities to intervene in their lives and relationships aesthetically and ethically.
Mark Hayward works as a Family Therapist in the health service in UK and applied himself to a number of systemic models before training in narrative therapy. He works with young people and their families in a mental health setting and often uses videos of practice to analyse and demonstrate practice skills. Mark has been teaching narrative practice for about ten years after studying with Michael White and qualifying on the first Dulwich Centre post-graduate International course. Mark is a founding Director of the UK Institute of Narrative Therapy which brought together teachers and therapists in UK to co-ordinate training in narrative practice.
Saviona Cramer is a Narrative and Family Therapist and co-owner of the Barcai Institute of Narrative Family and Couples Therapy in Tel Aviv, Israel. Saviona has been practicing, teaching and supervising Narrative Therapy for the last 22 years, since connecting with Michael White while training at the Ackerman Institute. As a Narrative Family therapist, she works with couples around relationships and sex, with children and their families, anorexia and bulimia, and trauma. She has published several articles about her work and presented at Narrative conferences since 1997.
Sue Mitchell has over 20 year’s experience working as a psychologist, community and project worker in urban, rural and remote Australia as well as internationally. She has long held a commitment to approaches that are informed by social justice frameworks, consider the contexts of people’s lives and that honour people’s unique meaning making, capacities and skills in living.
For over 25 years I have been working with the narrative practices and ideas as a teacher, supervisor and therapist, applying these to a wide range of problems. A large part of my work is connected to working with trauma, loss, couple therapy and women that struggle with eating difficulties. In 1984 I joined the Barcai Institute, the Center for Individual, Family and Marital Therapy in Tel Aviv, a center for teaching, supervising and therapy with couples, individuals and families. Since 1994 the Barcai Institute has been a leading institution for teaching and training of Narrative Therapy in Israel for which I have personally played a major role in developing the curriculum and teaching it. I am a clinical certified member of AAMFT (1983) and a certified Supervisor in Marriage and Family Therapy by the Israeli Association (1985). I have published articles on Narrative work in English and Hebrew.
Christian Beels is a retired psychiatrist who has specialized in work with the families of the severely mentally ill, helping to form institutions and narratives that make use of their numbers and their common experience. At Bronx Psychiatric Center, he founded an inpatient and outpatient service that served the mentally ill of a large area of the Bronx with multi-family groups as the centerpiece of their psychiatric services. At the Psychiatric Institute affiliated with the Columbia Psychiatry Department, he founded the Public Psychiatry Fellowship, a program that introduces psychiatrists after residency to the possibilities of a career in the public sector. He is the author of A different story: The rise of narrative in psychotherapy.
Poh Lin Lee has engaged in narrative practice and been involved in conversations in Australia and overseas in the area of family violence, state violence, displacement and seeking asylum with individuals, families and children for the past 12 years. Poh Lin is now based in France and alongside therapeutic work, supervision and training Poh Lin has been collaborating with a film maker for the past three years combining narrative practice ideas with the development of a feature hybrid documentary.
Lobna works as a clinical supervisor for the Community Restorative Centre in Sydney and as a casual tutor (social work) at The University of Sydney. She has been connected to narrative practices for almost 10 years, with a particular passion for people affected by the criminal justice system. Lobna is interested in exploring alternative possibilities, alternative knowledges, and in people’s acts of resistance from the periphery. Narrative therapy practices have allowed Lobna to remain committed to acts of social and political activism, while at the same time positioning individuals and communities as experts and knowledge-producers. Her current PhD research is focussed on juvenile justice policy, and draws on Michel Foucault and Carol Bacchi to disrupt dominant current discourses that produce particular types of subjects. Lobna hopes to explore alternate discourses that have less-harmful effects on people and on communities.
Loretta works for a non-government organisation in a community facing significant disadvantage. She also works in private practice through Narrative Therapy Connections Sydney. Loretta meets with people responding to a range of issues in their lives including relationship concerns, parenting issues, grief, and problematic drug use. Loretta is particularly passionate about assisting people where expressions of distress (including self-harm or suicidal thoughts) have arisen from witnessing or being subjected to violence, in reclaiming their lives from these effects. She enjoys her work very much, especially seeing the liberating effects of conversations deconstructing dominant ideas about ‘mental illness’ labels, gender, family, race and class.
Ola Elhassan is a Social worker with over 15 years’ experience working across different communities. Through having the opportunity to work in both the NGO and Government sector she has managed to acquire a variety of skills and had the opportunity to work with people from diverse backgrounds. She is passionate about working with young people and has developed and facilitated a range of training tools and programs for young people that have been, and continue to be, effectively delivered within various community organisations & schools. She sits on several steering committees and She also founded the Locked Out Support and Network committee, which supports women and children with a relative in Prison.
An accidental web-developer, Sarah picked up some programming skills while stranded for a few months in Silicon Valley in 2013. Since then, it has been her pleasure to work with narrative therapists (in her off-hours), to create an engaging presence for narrative therapy online. In particular she is the on-call architect of the Dulwich’s Centre’s always-evolving website. In her day job Sarah is a writer for an American social benefit company, Civic Dinners. She is also a published poet and essayist. She lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Phillipa Johnson is a narrative practitioner experienced in community development, community education and social change projects. Phillipa has worked across areas of international aid and development, intimate partner and family violence, child protection, schools and the disability sector since 2005. She most recently completed a collective narrative film project emerging from co-research with a group of young people with lived experience of family violence. Phillipa is committed to working towards both healing and social justice with those experiencing oppression and hardship.
Troy works as a psychologist in public and private practice in Rockhampton and Woorabinda in Central Queensland. As a whitefella Australian man of mostly Cornish and Irish descent he sees himself as very privileged to have increasingly worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, families and communities over the last 10 years and he has learned respectful practices and two-way learning journeys are vitally important. He is currently also collaborating on a collective narrative practice project named: ‘Shy or Quiet when we want to be, but never Silenced.’
Marc is a narrative therapist and community worker living in Ottawa, Canada.
As a narrative therapist, Marc meets with young people and their communities of concern who are responding to a broad range of issues in their lives, including living with the effects of abuse and gendered violence, grief, mental health challenges and relationship concerns. Marc is particularly interested in co-developing gender and cross-cultural partnerships in his local community to support his work with gender diverse youth and Indigenous youth and their families. Over the past number of years, Marc’s engagement with narrative practices has been very much inspired by creative developments in Collective Narrative Practices appearing in diverse contexts around the world. In 2004, Marc had the opportunity to study with Michael White as part of Dulwich Centre’s post-graduate International course and most recently he completed the Master in Narrative Therapy and Community Work program through the Dulwich Centre/University of Melbourne. Marc has had the opportunity to teach narrative practices in Australia, Turkey and Canada.
Kylie is a Saltwater Aboriginal Feminist living and working across the Mid North Coast of NSW, Australia, whose preferred pronouns are ‘her’ and ‘she’. Kylie joined Dulwich Faculty in 2016 and is enthusiastic about access to higher education for Aboriginal people, believing this key to becoming decision makers in policy matters that affect Aboriginal communities across Australia. Her professional background includes 18 years working alongside women and children in NGOs to respond to domestic and family violence, and developing respectful program material with men who have used violence in relationship. Presently, Kylie has been working independently on a range of community projects implementing and stretching Narrative Practices, and hopes to complete her PhD research… eventually! Kylie relishes teaching and tutoring with the Masters program, and meeting with people from diverse cultures, contexts and preferred selves.
Fareez is currently a Senior Assistant Director at AMKFSC community Services where he has worked for more than 10 years. He has an honor’s and master’s degree in Social Work from the National University of Singapore, and had also completed his Master in Narrative Therapy and Community Work in 2014. Fareez has experience in working with older adults, families with multiple difficulties, and families affected by incarceration. His current areas of interest are in the areas of grief work and culturally sensitive collaborative family interventions. Fareez was awarded the Promising Social Worker Award in 2011, and the Prime Minister Social Service Award in 2012. A volunteer mediator with the community mediation centre, Fareez was also awarded the Ministry of Law Outstanding Newcomer Award in 2012.
Fareez has contributed to the sector through various roles such as practice leader for FSC (Family Service Centre) onboarding, Strengthening Families Together Praxis group, Champion for the Community of Practice for Narrative Therapy, and the Group Work Practice Guide. He is also active in the Singapore Association of Social Work (SASW) where he had served in the Executive Committee for the past 6 years.
As a practitioner, he is keen on developing ways of integrating narrative ideas into collaborative social work case management and community work in Singapore. Fareez also works with persons affected by grief and loss, where he values ideas of ‘re-membering’ as important counter-stories to the dominant discourses of grief work.
Mehmet is a narrative therapist living in Istanbul, Turkey. He works as a clinical psychologist for POEM (Psychology Organisation Education Centre) and as a faculty member of the psychology department at Hasan Kalyoncu University. He has a Master in Education from RMIT University, Master in Clinical Psychology from Okan University, and PhD in counselling psychology from Marmara University. He has been connected to narrative practices since 2012 and is passionate about bringing narrative ideas and practice to Turkish contexts. Apart from narrative therapy, he also works on online addictions and resilience.
Kassandra works in private practice with adults, young people, and their communities of concern. She also enjoys using narrative ideas in group settings. She meets with people responding to a range of issues in their lives including living with the effects of abuse and gendered violence, relationship concerns, parenting issues including parenthood in decision and child-free considerations, grief, and bulimia/anorexia to which she works from an insider perspective. Kassandra is particularly passionate in bringing an intersectional feminist consciousness within her narrative practice, and facilitating experience of preferred stories through the deconstruction of the interpersonal, social, cultural and political contexts in which problems arise. Kassandra is thrilled about her collaboration with Dulwich center in a range of projects – especially the recent Feminisms, Narrative Practice & Intersectionality project in which she is actively involved. Alongside her narrative practice, she offers narrative workshops, supervision and trainings in Greece and overseas. She is the key faculty member for the Greek training program through the Dulwich Center/Institute of Narrative Therapy in Thessaloniki. She completed the Master in Narrative Therapy and Community Work program through the Dulwich Centre/University of Melbourne. Kassandra is now tutoring on the same Masters course and enjoys meeting with people from many different countries, cultures and contexts through their work.
After completing my Bachelor of Medicine at Kandahar University in Afghanistan in 2004, I worked as a doctor in Afghanistan for ten years (until 2014) as a Field Medical Officer (FMO), General Practitioner (GP) and Night Shift doctor in various clinics and hospitals.
At the same time as working as a medical doctor, I also have considerable experience as a Human Rights activist. During my time as Provincial Program Manager at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, I achieved several professional goals including the establishment of the Women & Youth Civil Society Organization in a remote and conservative area of Afghanistan (this was particularly to support women who were suffering domestic violence); the foundation of the first ever women shelter for those women who escaped their homes due to domestic violence and seek refuge, the foundation of the Juvenile Correction Centre (to foster the rehabilitation of youth in Afghanistan); and the implementation of policies and procedures whereby local Afghanis might present grievances to international military forces and local police and the forces and police be held to account.
Kristina’s engagement with narrative practice began in Aotearoa New Zealand, where she worked at a community counselling service. Much of her work there was with women who expressed concerns about eating and its effects on their bodies. Some of these concerns had become named anorexia and it was hearing the stories of these women’s responses to anorexia’s ongoing influence in their lives, that stood in contrast to much of the wider literature on anorexia, that led Kristina to Australia where she began her PhD research at the University of Melbourne. Her community-based study utilises a narrative lens to offer an alternative story to the one so readily gleaned from much of the academic and clinical literature about people whose lives become impacted by anorexia. As someone with insider experience herself, Kristina considers her research to be a form of activism. She holds hopes for it to be of interest to insiders, practitioners and advocates, and for it to inspire others to consider how narrative ideas can shape respectful and hopeful research in their own contexts. Kristina has taught narrative practice/ideas in Aotearoa and Australia, and tutors on the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work as well as working on a variety projects for Dulwich Centre Publications.
Angela Tsun On-Kee is a social worker, and a narrative practitioner, researcher and trainer. In mid 1990s, she began to question the counselling and family therapy theories that she has been practicing and teaching, particularly the expert position of therapists. She therefore searched for something different, and soon she fell in love with narrative ideas. In 2001, Angela had the privilege to learn from Michael White’s open workshops and intensives in Hong Kong. She was struck by the non-blaming decentring and respectful attitudes of narrative therapy. Since then, she has been learning and practicing narrative ideas as well as hoping to indigenise narrative ideas in Chinese communities.
Angela has also been giving training to practitioners of government departments and social services agencies in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Macao and Hong Kong. As well, she enjoys the privilege to collaborate with social services agencies and to do co-research with persons who seek for differences. She is always moved by the hopes and dreams of these persons which are often documented and can contribute to the lives of other people.
After her retirement from the Department of Social Work, Hong Kong Baptist University in mid 2017, Angela devotes most of her time in doing narrative training and supervision in Hong Kong, Macao and mainland China.
Shelja Sen is a clinical psychologist, family therapist, writer and co-founder of Children First Institute of Child & Adolescent Mental Health, New Delhi, India. Her latest book is entitled Reclaim Your Life. Shelja is a TED speaker and a columnist with a national newspaper, Indian Express. She has been working as a narrative practitioner and teacher for over 20 years in the UK and India. She is a curator of the unique skills, expertise and know-how of children and youth she has the honour of working with.
Contact her at shelja.sen@childrenfirstindia.com
Maya Sen is a mental health social worker and a narrative therapist based in Kolkata, West Bengal. She works primarily with young people within the context of child protection. The focus of her work has been highlighting contextual factors that sustain problems in people’s lives and storying responses to hardship.Through the use of narrative practices she hopes to bring considerations of social justice into her mental health work.
Along with this she has been associated with Kolkata Sanved – an N.G.O that uses Dance Movement Therapy to bring about social change-for the last three years and is currently Assistant Program Manager. She has also been involved in Kolkata Sanved’s various academic programs as faculty and has taught modules on mental health and counseling.
She has completed the Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community work program run by the Dulwich Centre in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and is tutoring on the same program.
Erica Lambert (Te Paatu, Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa, Ngai Takoto). Her ancestral lands are located in the Far North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Erica has worked across Aboriginal communities on the land of the Kulin Nations for the last 20 years. As therapeutic practitioner, grassroots community worker and Indigenous researcher, Erica is committed to challenging dominant Western paradigms and the ways people’s lives are marginalised by racism, colonial patriarchy and oppression through gender, ethnicity and class. Erica draws inspiration from a Māori proverb recited by Māori studies professor Sir Mason Durie: Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini (It’s never about one person): a warrior never stands alone, but stands with many. It takes a whole community to effect and sustain change.
Consultants
We involve a wide range of consultants in all the different projects we are engaged with. The following people, however, are longstanding consultants whom we turn to time and again for advice, feedback, and reflections.
