Encouraging creative transformation.
Research
My research interests are focused on relationships within systems through the lens of trauma, especially within the context of torture. Additionally, my research focuses on how human beings navigate through networks of violence, conflict and disastrous events. I am fascinated by relational and dynamic intersections and am in relationships with people who inhabit and dwell within subjectivities that require them to navigate through treacherous landscapes of violation, dehumanization, and transgression. I employ several mixed methods study designs with an eye toward decolonizing community-based participatory research processes.
Teaching
Teaching is a privilege that I take seriously. I appreciate highly interactive, supportive but critically engaged pedagogical approaches that push students to work through challenging cases, real-life examples, meaningful exercises, and readings that highlight specific learning objectives. I enjoy classrooms where debate and exchange not only support knowledge acquisition but invite students to care for each others' learning and evolution over time. I also believe in teaching applied skills that connect to sociocultural and philosophical theories to re-imagine solutions to intractable problems.
Service
My service work encompasses a myriad of roles and responsibilities. I serve foundations, civil society organizations, and faith-based institutions in several capacities.
Spirituality
As a student of theology, I have been finding ways to integrate spiritual practices and methods into public health intervention design and implementation. Additionally, I am an ordained minister in a multi-vocational ministry.
Supporting the next generation.
I am blessed to witness the talents and social justice commitments of a new generation. Each year, I encounter vibrant young people committed to alleviating suffering and supporting equity in health and society. It is an honor to be part of the journeys of so many young people as they seek their highest and best selves.
LOVE. Hope. Joy.
Finding a way through intractability.
My work for the past thirty years often brings me into spaces bereft of meaning and purpose due to profound violations of personhood and self. I have witnessed the challenges of violence where people are left umoored.
Early in my career, my professional life brought me into war zones and conflict areas, slum environments and the domestic urban realities of crime and homelessness. My work in refugee camps, torture treatment centers and prisons would emerge from this work.
Throughout my career, I have sought ways to mitigate the sheer suffering in these landscapes. An aspect of my calling has been to understand how to get beyond intractability and re-connect to a different vision of oneself and our commons through creative and imaginative processes. It doesn't always work in the end, but my commitment has been to consistently make attempts to work collaboratively with many people attend to address such human suffering.
