Sunday, March 23, 2025, 2 pm Eastern / 8 pm Palestine - Zoom
CAPTIVE MINDS:
COLONIAL TRAUMA AND MENTAL HEALTH IN PALESTINE
a conversation with
Nihaya Abu Rayyan
Devin Atallah
Jess Ghannam
Khadija Salim
Moderated by Marwa Elshakry
SPEAKERS
Nihaya Abu Rayyan MA is a Psychotherapist, narrative therapy practitioner, consultant, co-researcher, activist, indigenous healer and trainer entrenched in de-colonial liberation and healing justice practice.
Devin George Atallah PhD is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a leader in the Decolonial Antiracism Research & Action (DARA) collective. Dr. Atallah is a multiracial Palestinian from the shataat (diaspora). He strives to engage in decolonial approaches in his research, theory, and healing practices, with a focus on Palestinian resistance, sumud, grief, and liberation.
Khadija Salim MA is a fourth-year counseling psychology doctoral student at Seton Hall University. She is a licensed professional counselor, with specialization and certifications in trauma. Khadija's prior research has focused on psychological refusal among liberated Palestinian political prisoners, and her dissertation explores liberatory frameworks that serve as buffers against burnout in BIPOC racial justice activists. She has clinical experience working and consulting in the Middle East.
Jess Ghannam PhD is in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute for Global Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at UCSF. His research areas include evaluating the long-term health consequences of war on displaced communities and the psychological and psychiatric effects of armed conflict on children. Dr. Ghannam has developed community health clinics in the Middle East that focus on developing community-based treatment programs for families in crisis.
Marwa Elshakry PhD is an Associate Professor at Columbia University who specializes in the history of science, technology, and medicine in the modern Middle East. She received her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2003) from Princeton. Her first book, entitled, Reading Darwin in Arabic was published in 2013 with University of Chicago Press.