Oxford Trauma Conference 2024

A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development.

Rather than offering quick-fix solutions to these complex issues, Dr. Maté weaves together scientific research, case histories, and his own insights and experience to present a broad perspective that enlightens and empowers people to promote their own healing and that of those around them.

After 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, Dr. Maté worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness.

Deran Young is a licensed therapist, CDWF, CDTL, Co-Author of New York TImes Best Seller, You Are Your Best Thing, retired military officer, and the founder of Black Therapists Rock.

Black Therapists Rock is a non profit organization that mobilizes over 30,000 mental health professionals committed to reducing the psychological impact of systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma.

She obtained her social work degree from University of Texas, where she studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa for two semesters creating a high school counseling center for under-resourced students. Deran describes herself as someone who loves to learn from various cultures and has visited over 37 different countries and her clinical experience spans across four different continents. Her passion for culture and people has led her to become a highly sought after diversity and inclusion consultant working with companies like BBERG, Facebook, Linked In, Field Trip Health, and YWCA.

Deran’s advocacy expands over several online and offline platforms. With a current social media audience of over 100,000 followers on IG and Facebook, Deran has become a leading influencer and public figure committed to spreading mental health awareness and improving health equity. She resides in the Washington DC area and continues to explore the world with her 10 year old son.

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a highly effective, evidence-based therapeutic model that de-pathologizes the multi-part personality. His IFS Institute offers training for professionals and the general public. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, and has published five books, including No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Dick lives with his wife Jeanne near Chicago, close to his three daughters and his growing number of grandchildren.

Monnica Williams, Ph.D. is a board-certified, licensed clinical psychologist, specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapies. She is a full tenured Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Disparities, and Director of the Laboratory for Culture and Mental Health Disparities. She is the Clinical Director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut, and Behavioural Wellness Clinic in Ottawa. She has also founded outpatient clinics in Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, including a mental health clinic for refugees.

World-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction, John Gottman has conducted 50 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. His work on marriage and parenting has earned him numerous major awards. Co-founder of The Gottman Institute and co-founder of Affective Software, Inc. with his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, John was also the Executive Director of the Relationship Research Institute. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington, where he founded “The Love Lab” at which much of his research on couples’ interactions was conducted.

Julie is a co-founder and President of The Gottman Institute and co-founder of Affective Software, Inc. with her husband John Gottman. A highly respected clinical psychologist, she is sought internationally by media and organizations as an expert advisor on marriage, sexual harassment and rape, domestic violence, gay and lesbian adoption, same-sex marriage, and parenting issues. She is the co-creator of the immensely popular The Art and Science of Love weekend workshops for couples, and she also co-designed the national clinical training program in Gottman Method Couples Therapy.

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School. An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is an Advisory Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation and the author of three books, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022). She is best known for her work on integrating mindfulness-based interventions into trauma treatment, and she is also the creator of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) therapy. janinafisher.com

Licia Sky is a Boston based somatic educator, writer, artist, singer-songwriter, and bodyworker who works with traumatized individuals and trains mental health professionals to use mindful meditation in movement, theater exercises, writing and voice as tools for attunement, healing and connection.

Linda Thai (she/her), LMSW, is a trauma therapist, educator and consultant who specializes in cutting edge brain- and body-based modalities and incorporates consideration of issues pertaining to the impact of oppressive systems upon identity, mental health and wellbeing, and the invisibilized wounds of racial trauma and attachment trauma. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, and now living in Alaska, Linda is a former child refugee who is not only redefining what it means to be Vietnamese, to be Australian, and to be a United States-ian, she is redefining what it means to be wounded, whole, and a healer. Linda is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical and intergenerational trauma at the individual and community levels and deeply believes in the healing power of coming together in community to share stories, to sing, and to grieve.

Frank Anderson, MD, completed his residency and was a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is both a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He specializes in the treatment of trauma and dissociation and is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the IFS model of therapy.

Dr. Anderson is a Lead Trainer at the IFS Institute with Richard Schwartz and maintains a long affiliation with, and trains for, Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Center. He serves as an advisor to the International Association of Trauma Professionals (IATP) and was the former chair and director of the Foundation for Self Leadership.

Dr. Anderson has lectured extensively on the Neurobiology of PTSD and Dissociation and wrote the chapter “Who’s Taking What” Connecting Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Internal Family Systems for Trauma in Internal Family Systems Therapy-New Dimensions. He co-authored a chapter on “What IFS Brings to Trauma Treatment in Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy” and recently co-authored Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual.

His most recent book, entitled “Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems” was released on May 19, 2021.
Dr. Anderson maintains a private practice in Concord, MA.

www.FrankAndersonMD.com

Ruth Cohn is a psychotherapist living and practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been specializing in work with survivors of trauma and neglect, their intimate partners and families since 1988. She is a Certified Sex Therapist, certified in Neurofeedback, EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Imago Relationship Therapy.

Ruth is also the author of numerous articles on sexuality, trauma and neglect and three books: Working With the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice, Coming Home to Passion: Restoring Loving Sexuality in Couples With Histories of Childhood Trauma and Neglect, and Out of My Mind: Late Night Contemplations About Trauma and Neglect.

Ruth came of age as a therapist in the early 1980’s when the recent Women’s Liberation Movement had just brought violence against women and children squarely into the public eye. Particularly sexual violence, a long taboo was finally becoming exposed. Obviously, it has gone in and out of the shadows since then, but that was an important “outing” that rapidly determined the direction of her work as a therapist.

Bessel van der Kolk MD spends his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study a range of treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults.

In 1984, he set up one of the first clinical/research centers in the US dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations, which has trained numerous researchers and clinicians specializing in the study and treatment of traumatic stress, and which has been continually funded to research the impact of traumatic stress and effective treatment interventions. He did the first studies on the effects of SSRIs on PTSD; was a member of the first neuroimaging team to investigate how trauma changes brain processes, and did the first research linking BPD and deliberate self-injury to trauma and neglect in early childhood.

Much of his research has focused on how trauma has a different impact at different stages of development, and that disruptions in care-giving systems have additional deleterious effects that need to be addressed for effective intervention. In order to promote a deeper understanding of the impact of childhood trauma and to foster the development and execution of effective treatment interventions, he initiated the process that led to the establishment of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), a Congressionally mandated initiative that now funds approximately 150 centers specializing in developing effective treatment interventions, and implementing them in a wide array of settings, from juvenile detention centers to tribal agencies, nationwide.

He has focused on studying treatments that stabilize physiology, increase executive functioning and help traumatized individuals to feel fully alert to the present. This has included an NIMH funded study on EMDR and NCCAM funded study of yoga, and, in recent years, the study of neurofeedback to investigate whether attentional and perceptual systems (and the neural tracks responsible for them) can be altered by changing EEG patterns.

​His efforts resulted in the establishment of Trauma Center (now the Trauma Research Foundation) that consisted of a well-trained clinical team specializing in the treatment of children and adults with histories of child maltreatment, that applied treatment models that are widely taught and implemented nationwide, a research lab that studied the effects of neurofeedback and MDMA on behavior, mood, and executive functioning, and numerous trainings nationwide to a variety of mental health professional, educators, parent groups, policy makers, and law enforcement personnel.

Daniel J. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry.  He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behavior, autobiographical memory and narrative.

Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.

The author of four books, including the recent New York Times bestseller Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, Terry knows how to lead people on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy and personal fulfillment.

His revolutionary approach to couples therapy, Relational Life Therapy, underpins all his books, courses, and teachings. RLT equips people with the powerful relational skills they need to make love work and cultivate authentic connections—to themselves, each other, and the planet as a whole.

A former senior faculty member of the Family Institute of Cambridge in Massachusetts and a retired Clinical Fellow of the Meadows Institute in Arizona, Terry has worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and fellow therapists. His extraordinary ability to save couples on the brink of divorce garnered Terry the reputation of “the turnaround guy,” and demand from other therapists to learn his RLT method skyrocketed.

Jeanne Catanzaro, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years’ experience in treating eating and trauma related issues. She has written articles about IFS and eating disorders, and is dedicated to helping people develop Self-led relationships with food and their bodies.

Jeanne is a certified IFS therapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is Vice Chair of the executive committee for the IFS Institute.

Caroline Welch is CEO and Co-founder, with Dr. Dan Siegel, of the Mindsight Institute in Santa Monica, California. She offers lectures and workshops to enhance well-being in our personal and professional lives. Caroline began her mindfulness practice forty years ago while working in Japan.

Caroline’s first book, The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women, is now available.

Born on a working dairy farm, Caroline’s first trip out of Darien, Wisconsin was to Shiraz, Iran on a high school exchange program. That was the beginning of her love of travel and exploration which has included climbing Mount Kenya, teaching English in Japan for three years, and backpacking through 25 different countries.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, with a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, Caroline started her legal career as a corporate litigator. She has served as a Los Angeles County court appointed mediator, and as in-house counsel at Spelling Entertainment Group and MGM Studios.

Caroline is an avid watercolorist. She and her husband, Dan, live in Santa Monica, and have two adult children.

Julia Samuel MBE is a leading UK psychotherapist who worked for decades in the NHS. She has held many roles in the charitable sector. She is Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK an organisation she played a significant part for 25 years. She is a Vice President of BACP. Julia was given an Honorary Doctorate by Middlesex University in 2017.

Julia has written three books, all Sunday Times bestsellers, Grief Works, This Too Shall Pass and she published Every Family Has a Story in 2022, the USA edition published November 2022. Her books have been published in 17 foreign territories.

She has written for all the national newspapers and broadcast on many TV and radio programmes. Her new podcast series Therapy Works was released in October and was immediately in the top 10 Apple charts, no 1 on mental health.

In 2021 Julia produced a 5* rated app for those who grieve, Grief Works – a 28 day course to support you in your grief which has been 5* rated, Apple featured it numerous times as a recommended and trending app.

Julia has been married for over 4 decades, has 4 adult children and 9 grandchilren.

C. Sue Carter, PhD is Distinguished University Scientist, and Director Emerita of the Kinsey Institute and Rudy Professor Emerita of Biology at Indiana University Bloomington and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she co-directed the Brain-Body Center in the Department of Psychiatry. She formerly held the position of Distinguished
University Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland and prior to that was Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Ecology, Ethology and Evolution at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Carter is past president of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society and holds fellow status in that Society and in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award. She has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and edited 5 books including “Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis” (MIT Press). Dr. Carter is the scientist, who discovered the relationship between social behavior and oxytocin. Her work examines how oxytocin pathways are at the center of physiological systems that enable human sociality.

Edy Nathan is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in New York and Massachusetts. Edy’s work focuses on topics surrounding the tough conversations people don’t like to have — grief, sex, and trauma. Her work in grief, trauma, and sexuality offers insight into the way loss affects the soul and the brain. She uses these insights to breathe new meaning into the lives of those stagnated by loss or trauma.

Edy got her undergraduate degree and first master’s degree from New York University. Dual majors in Psychology and Drama Therapy. The second master’s degree from Fordham University, was in Social Work, and allowed me the licensure to create a private practice in New York City.

Post graduate Training at The Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy led to a certificate program in Sex Therapy and Sex Education at the University of Michigan. The latter program enabled me to become part of an elite group of Certified Sex Therapists given through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT). Becoming a certified Hypnotherapist, EMDR Tier Two clinician and regression and psychodrama therapist, enabled me to offer clients a variety of tools to invigorate their healing.

Art, psychodrama, role play, masks, storytelling, and clay are foundational aspects of my practice. Emotions need a medium, especially the complex and destabilizing ones. That way they can work their way out of the body and reveal themselves to you. Clients begin to see parts of the self they never recognized. And that’s when the healing begins, when, finally, you meet the self – the one that’s been hiding.

It has been the motivation for me to talk about grief in all of its forms. In October 2018, my first book was published.: It’s Grief: The Dance of Self-Discovery through Trauma and Loss. The next book is in the works: Healing Sexual Grief: Reclaim the Self from Loathing to Liberation to Love 2024 probable publishing date. You can connect with Edy at www.edynathan.com, Psychology Today Blog Spot Tales of Grief, and all social media outlets.

David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in Imperial College London and Chief Research Officer of Awaknlifesciences. He is currently Founding Chair of the charity DrugScience.org.uk and has been president of the European Brain Council, the BAP, BNA, and ECNP. David has published 35 books and over 1000 research papers that define his many landmark contributions to psychopharmacology including GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction and the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelics. Some of this has been made into films e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8661404 on Netflix and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w7bq on the BBC and a play https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43887749-all-you-need-is-lsd . He broadcasts widely to the general public on pharmacology and psychiatric matters, has over 60k followers on twitter and has his own very popular podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-drug-science-podcast/id1474603382 .

David’s publications are on https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.nutt/publications.html

Sat Dharam is a Kundalini Yoga teacher trainer and instructor, author, and naturopathic doctor practicing in Owen Sound, Ontario. She has studied Kundalini Yoga since 1976 and has facilitated teacher training programs in Toronto (ON), Canmore (AB), and New Mexico.

She has developed an addiction recovery program using Kundalini Yoga as well as a breast health yoga training, designed to help educate women in breast cancer prevention through Kundalini Yoga and lifestyle change. She been working closely with Dr. Gabor Maté in delivering a psychotherapeutic modality called Compassionate Inquiry, which since 2019 has been taught to over 3500 people in over 90 countries. A featured teacher at the Toronto Yoga Show for many years, as well as the Vancouver Yoga Show, she has written several best selling books: A Call to Women: The Healthy Breast Program and Workbook, The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer, and The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Women’s Health.

Benjamin is the Founder of Televagal, Khiron House and Get Stable. He is an accredited psychotherapist, author and entrepreneur. He has had a rich and varied career, combining his interests in psychology, the media and business. In his twenties he went to film school and made a feature length film which was distributed by HBO and Paramount, then founded and ran nightclubs and restaurants, before starting a family, training as a psychotherapist and writing his first book which led to presenting a television series for the BBC, as the psychotherapist in Spendaholics.

More recently he has combined his business experience, clinical training and media skills to set up Khiron Clinics, one of the only residential trauma-treatment centres in the world; to lobby for more effective treatment in the public sector through his non-profit Get Stable; and to develop Televagal which delivers nervous-system informed technology for a variety of behavioural health problems. Benjamin is also a practicing couples’ therapist, using trauma and nervous-system informed therapies to help his clients optimise and heal their relationships.

An internationally recognized breathing/movement specialist and best-selling author of HUMANUAL, Betsy Polatin, MFA, SEP, has been teaching for more than forty years. She was a master lecturer and an assistant professor at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts for twenty-five years. Her background includes forty-five years of movement education and performance, as well as training in the Alexander Technique, music, dance, yoga, meditation, trauma resolution, and the broader healing arts. Her work is greatly influenced by the teachings of Spiritual and Meditation Masters. Betsy leads international trainings where she presents her unique and revolutionary fusion of ideas: scientific knowledge combined with ancient wisdom and intuitive human creativity. Teaching experience includes: Touch and Movement in Trauma Therapy for PESI, Kripalu, The Embodiment Conference, Psychotherapy Networker, Performing Arts Medicine Association, U.S. Association for Body Psychotherapy, Science and Nonduality Conferences, and International Trauma and Yoga Conferences in the US and abroad.

Since 2016, she has been co-teaching ongoing traveling workshops, themed “Trauma and the Performing Artist” and “Trauma in the Public Eye,” with Peter A. Levine, PhD. She teaches Returning to Ourselves, the Wisdom of Trauma, with Dr. Gabor Maté. Betsy is the author of HUMANUAL, an Epic Journey to your Expanded Self and The Actor’s Secret. As a well-known educator, she has published numerous articles in the Huffington Post. She maintains a private practice in Los Angeles CA and online internationally and has a training/nontraining course. Please visit: HUMANUAL.com

Dr. Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH is a double-board Certified physician in Preventive Medicine and Addiction Medicine with a Double Masters in Biochemistry and Public Health. A former foster mom, adoptive mom, and a general surgery resident and now the leading medical expert on stored trauma in the body, she bridges the worlds of functional medicine, neuroscience, and trauma work to create online educational and experiential programs for professionals through her certificate training program, the Biology of Trauma®.

Dr Stephen W. Porges, PhD is a Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He has published more than 400 peer‐reviewed scientific papers that have been cited in more than 50,000 peer-reviewed papers and holds several patents involved in monitoring and regulating autonomic state. He created the Polyvagal Theory and a music-based intervention (Safe and Sound Protocol™). He is author of several books including The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton, 2017), and Polyvagal Safety (Norton, 2021), as well as co-author with Seth Porges of Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us (Norton, 2023), and co-editor with Deb Dana of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018). Dr. Porges is co-creator with Anthony Gorry of Polyvagal Music™, and a founder of the Polyvagal Institute.

Anthony Gorry is the CEO of Polyvagal Music™ LLC and AjoiA Ltd; he has invented a new technology and clinical protocol with American behavioural neuroscientist, Dr Stephen W. Porges. Anthony Gorry is a music producer, audio designer and composer; he has a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Performing Arts and a diverse portfolio which includes co-producing music for nature documentaries, collaborating with BAFTA awardwinning production teams, and working with renowned artists and Grammy award winning producers, including Gwen Stefani, No Doubt, Richard Ashcroft and Moby, having had success at the top of the U.S and International charts. Anthony has worked with many international brands, including L’Oréal and Adidas producing content for worldwide campaigns and has had his work featured in movies and television. Recently he served as an audio consultant for LG’s emerging technology team in Silicon Valley.