You see growth was my holy grail. Yes, it was. And it failed. It couldn’t last, I do agree. But in the middle of the hustle, you cannot really see. Nynke Laverman’s spoken word/song Your Ancestor has really touched me this year. The same applies to Kim Nicholas’s book Under the Sky We Make.* For 2023, I wish for us to slow down where we can. The climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and our overall limited progress on the SDGs require a radical re-think of our systems and action. Degrowth within rich countries appears to have strong (and growing ) potential.   On a personal le ..read more

Image of a bicycle in floodwater, by Mika Baumeister My heart goes out to everyone who is affected by the floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Over 150 deaths and many people missing. So much new disruption and loss on top of the pandemic. From a trauma perspective, the key priorities are common sense ones: safety first, good communication, connecting people with loved ones, and reiterating that individuals and the community – with adequate support – can handle this. Authorities and the community are on it, and both professionals and volunteers have been out in force to reduce the p ..read more

Build solid relationships. Focus on slow, caring science. Some of the insights that stayed with me from the Zoom calls on making our daily research practice more inclusive. The conversations were so rich (thanks to all 79 participants!) that I’ve summarized them in two parts: A summary of the presentation on inclusion in trauma research and clinical practice guidelines (published here) A summary of insights and resources shared (this post). The starting point was our analysis of children’s voice and cultural representation in traumatic stress treatment guidelines. We found a strong adult-ce ..read more

Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash Are you engaged in research? Take one of the projects you’re involved in… Is the team lead a white person or a person of color? How about the rest of the team, who are you inviting on it? Who are you studying; do they have a real say in the research agenda? Who do you cite; do you actively search for and include scholars from underrepresented backgrounds? Similarly, who do you invite to give presentations? I’m talking to myself as much as I’m talking to you; there are so many areas where I should have been more inclusive (more on that later). This Wednesday/Th ..read more

Making our daily research lives more inclusive For the researchers among us, the quality of our findings and resulting policy/practice change depends on how well we work together with the populations we study. Underrepresented groups are exactly that: underrepresented. Not only in research samples but also in those who lead the research, or are invited on the team. Next week, we’re organizing two 1-hour conversations on Zoom (offered twice to accommodate time zones) on generating feasible ideas to make our daily research practice more inclusive. Our starting point is this recent commentary on ..read more

Children with a disability are at greater risk of death at the hands of someone else – through homicide or the effects of maltreatment – than children without a disability. John Frederick* has led a systematic review looking at the theories that explain why this is the case. Here is John:   There is growing recognition of the increased vulnerability to abuse of children who are disabled. Specifically, within the literature on homicides and maltreatment-related deaths of children, disabled children have been identified as likely to experience a greater risk. We systematically reviewed the ..read more

Curious to know what the recent ISTSS conference was all about? Many thanks to Yoki Mertens for this reflection on the meeting!  It is early morning in a freezing-cold Boston and Judith Herman presents as the first keynote speaker of the 35th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS). One might assume the organizers scheduled it this way to ensure everybody arrives on time and it worked: The room is filled with over 1,700 attendees, more than ever before. It’s been 27 years since Judith Herman published her renowned book “Trauma and Recovery” and intr ..read more

The audio installation “Ubiquity – New Perspectives on Traumatic Experiences” will be exhibited 11-13 December 2019 at The Dax Centre in Melbourne (including an event with the makers on 12 December!) The installation is based on audio snippets taken from our Ear for Recovery project, a study of trauma recovery among children who experienced a serious injury. The audio snippets allowed us glimpses of their daily life afterwards, taking us into their kitchens, to their living rooms and showing us their favourite TV shows, and sharing their sorrows or fragments of their stories. The sound i ..read more

Didn’t get the chance (like me ) to attend the conference of the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies this year?   Maya Meentken and Marie-Louise Kullberg help us out! We are Maya and Marie-Louise, two Dutch PhD Candidates, sharing some of our ESTSS conference 2019 – both scientific and non-scientific – highlights with you. It all started on Thursday with the inspiring pre-conference paper-in-a-day workshop: A collaboration of 7 young researchers from Germany, Israel and the Netherlands with an interest in (child) trauma, but with a widely varying focus: From burn injury-rel ..read more

The Conversation just published our thoughts on supporting early career research leaders in Africa! Together with Bernard Slippers: It is widely accepted that the future of scientific development lies in enabling teams made up of people from different countries and disciplines. To do really great work, these often need to be quite big teams. But training programmes for scientists don’t typically include the types of leadership skills needed to pull this off. The kinds of skills needed to lead projects with diverse, multidisciplinary teams include reflective practice, strategic ..read more