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Send to friendWe are so grateful to have such an outstanding group of featured resource practitioners participating in the online dialogue titled 'Healing of Memories: Overcoming the Wounds of History.' We hope that you will join the conversation March 25 - 31, 2009!
Glenda Wildschut was appointed in 1995 by President Nelson Mandela to serve as a commissioner on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission under the chairmanship of Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, she served on the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee. Until recently, she served as the Director of the Desmond Tutu Leadership Academy. Currently, she is an independent leadership consultant and facilitator, providing an extensive executive coaching programme and works to assist leaders, particularly women in leadership positions, to be more effective in their roles.
Glenda has been involved in human rights advocacy since the early 1980s, working particularly with political prisoners in South Africa and Namibia, their families, exiles and orphaned returnee children. In 1998 she worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) at the Headquarters in Geneva examining the role of health workers in transitional societies. On behalf of the African National Congress(ANC), she co-chaired the placement board that facilitated the integration of all military health personnel into the national defense force (SANDF) and was involved in numerous structures to facilitate the transition to democracy in South Africa including the Transitional Executive Council (TEC). Her special interests are violence, trauma and torture rehabilitation, women and children in armed conflict, health workers and their contribution to post war reconstruction and impunity, truth and reconciliation. Glenda is a registered nurse, midwife, psychiatric nurse (specialising in child and adolescent psychiatry), community nurse practitioner and nurse educator. She is also a mother, sister, daughter and aunt, with interests in the arts, particularly choral music, and she trained as a classical singer. She is a member of the Cape Town Symphony Choir.
Fr Lapsley initially developed the Healing of Memories workshops while heading the Chaplaincy Project of the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture. South Africa’s past conflicts had led to a deeply divided society where there was much suffering. Through his own experience of living in exile, losing both hands in a parcel bomb explosion, and listening to the stories of the survivors whom he counselled at the Trauma Centre, Fr. Lapsley realised the importance of giving people a space in which their experiences could be told and acknowledged. He became a driving force in developing Healing of Memories workshops as an alternative form of providing support for victims and survivors of apartheid violence.
Fr Michael has become a well-known international advocate for reconciliation, forgiveness and restorative justice. During 2005, invitations for speaking engagements have been received from the 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and the Oklahoma bombing 10 th anniversary organizers. Workshops have been held for groups involved with issues around reconciliation and healing in the USA, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, peace psychologist and family therapist who is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA). At CHA she consults to the Victims of Violence Program and she is currently the liaison for international mental health projects. She is on the Board of the Center for Local and International Partnerships based at CHA. Since 1982, Dr. Weingarten has been a faculty member of the Family Institute of Cambridge where she founded and directs the Program in Families, Trauma and Resilience. She is founder and director of The Witnessing Project, a nonprofit organization that consults to individuals, families, and communities locally, nationally, and internationally to transform passive witnessing of violence and violation into effective action. Dr. Weingarten has worked in Kosovo and South Africa for the last several years, addressing issues of community-wide and continuous trauma. She is a Fellow of the Divisions of Family Psychology and the Psychology of Women of the American Psychological Association, from whom she received the 1994 award for Psychotherapy with Women. In 2002 she was given the award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Theory and Practice by the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA). She co-chairs AFTA’s Human Rights Committee. She has over 70 publications, including six books; is on the editorial boards of five journals; and her most recent book, Common Shock - Witnessing Violence Every Day: How We Are Harmed, How We Can Heal, won the 2004 Nautilus Award for Social Change. Dr. Weingarten lectures widely nationally and internationally and maintains a private consultation practice of individuals, couples and families. Her current work focuses on reasonable hope.
Zvi Bekerman teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and the Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. His research interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. In addition to publishing papers in a variety of journals, Bekerman is the coeditor (with Seonaigh MacPherson) of the refereed journal Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: An International Journal. He has also recently edited a number of books, including, with Diana Silberman-Keller, Henry A. Giroux, and Nicholas Burbules, Mirror Images: Popular Culture and Education (2008); with Ezra Kopelowitz, Cultural Education-Cultural Sustainability: Minority, Diaspora, Indigenous and Ethno-Religious Groups in Multicultural Societies (2008); with Claire McGlynn, Addressing Ethnic Conflict through Peace Education: International Perspectives (2007)
Donald W. Shriver, Jr. is Emeritus President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He served as president in the years 1975-91 and as fulltime teacher of ethics there until 1996. He was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1955 and served in ministerial capacities until 1972 then as Professor of Ethics and Society at Candler School of Theology in Emory University, 1972-75. He was a Visiting Senior Scholar of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa (2002). He has taught or co-taught graduate courses in ethics in various neighboring university professional schools, including the Jewish Theological Seminary and four Columbia University schools—business, law, international affairs, and journalism. His most recent work has been in human rights and national and international restorative justice. He has written some hundred articles and fourteen books. Included among the books he has authored or co-authored are two books, which include extensive analyses of national coping with “negative histories,” e.g. the Holocaust, slavery, apartheid, & war crimes in Germany, South Africa, Japan and USA, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (Oxford 1995, pb 1997, Korean trans. 2001), and Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds (Oxford, 2005, pb 2008, German trans. 2007).
Miriam Farida Fredericks is presently the Interim Head of Service Delivery at Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture. She is currently one of the four African representatives from the Sub Saharan Region on the Council of the International Council for Rehabilitation of Torture victims (IRCT). Miriam coordinated the Political Violence Program at Trauma Centre. At Trauma Centre we render mental health services to torture survivors and refugees as well as all victims of trauma and violence. She is a qualified social worker and has had many years of experience as a mental health worker having worked with psychiatric patients and at a centre rendering services to incarcerated clients. She has presented at many conferences and seminars. In 2007 she participated in the New Tactics training in Liberia in which she presented 'body mapping' as a 'bridging' tool to assist clients to externalise the pain and memory of their previous torture experiences.
Amber Gray is both a longtime practitioner of body centered arts and sciences (somatic psychology, massage therapy, Life Impressions Body-work -- based on the teachings of Ida Rolf, Ayurvedic medicine and Feldenkrais -- dance movement therapy, energy medicine, cranio-sacral therapy, yoga, and shiatsu), and an advocate of human rights. She has twenty years experience in human services and work with displaced people, refugees, and survivors of human rights abuses such as torture, war, and organized violence. Her expertise is in the development of culturally congruent programs that reinforce individual and communal resilience for communities who have experienced mass social trauma such as war or natural disaster. She combines somatic psychology, current trauma and neuropsychological research, movement therapy, ritual, creative arts, and Continuum in her trainings for health and mental health professionals and paraprofessionals. Her passion is in training paraprofessionals globally who work on the edge, and in the field, to work creatively through the body and the arts to assist survivors of human rights abuses and mass atrocities. As a dancer, her passion is Afro-Caribbean dance, and she was co-director of Planetary Dance Ensemble for four years.
