Speaker: Renos K. Papadopoulos, Professor of Analytical Psychology, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the ‘Centre for Trauma, Asylum and Refugees’

Chair: Beth Heron, Research Manager, King's College London

Professor Papadopoulos will explore the relationship between ‘violence’ and ‘trauma’. Both of them refer to actual painful realities but also are terms, images and constructions that belong to extremely powerful and evocative societal discourses. He will endeavour to identify several typical ‘epistemological traps’ that these discourses tend to create, unless one approaches phenomena related to violence and trauma with the utmost epistemological sensitivity and agility.

Bio:

Renos K. Papadopoulos, Ph.D. is Professor of Analytical Psychology in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Director of the ‘Centre for Trauma, Asylum and Refugees’ and of the postgraduate programmes in ‘Refugee Care’. He is also a member of the ‘Human Rights Centre’, of the ‘Transitional Justice Network’ and of the ‘Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub’ all at the University of Essex, as well as Honorary Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Family Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic.

He is a practising Clinical Psychologist, Family Therapist and Jungian Psychoanalyst who spent most of his professional life training and supervising specialists in these three spheres. As consultant to numerous organisations, he has been working with refugees, tortured persons and other survivors of political violence and disasters in many countries.

His writings have appeared in sixteen languages. Recently, he has been given Awards by the European Family Therapy Association for Lifetime ‘Outstanding contribution to the field of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice’, by the University of Essex for the best ‘International Research Impact’, and by two Mexican Foundations for his ‘exceptional work with vulnerable children and families in Mexico’.

His last two books,'Involuntary Dislocation. Home, Trauma, Resilience and Adversity-Activated Development' (2021) and 'Moral Injury and Beyond: Understanding Human Anguish and Healing Traumatic Wounds' (2020) have been published by Routledge.