publications.

A study on the use of dance movement therapy/psychotherapy to treat the phenomenon we call ‘trauma’.

Abstract: this study surveyed contemporary approaches to trauma within dance movement therapy/psychotherapy (DMTP). 17 qualitative English-language studies (2010–2020) were examined using qualitative and embodied arts-based research methods. Trauma was conceptualised as a multi-layered, complex phenomenon for the lived and collective body, isolation, and adaptive survival, reflecting DMTP’s understanding of experiences of individual and systemic harm, the enactive self, dissociation, neurobiology, human rights and wider context. Trauma implicated bodily, intrapsychic, relational, communal, social, economic and structural realms. Goals were safety, freedom, pleasure and agency. Dance was a flexible, multimodal, gestalt container for simple yet-complex interventions linking inner sensing, creative exploration and enactive movement to meaning-making and cognitive and identity restructuring. Therapeutic competence, ego and relationship to power shaped DMTP’s work with individual and collective trauma. DMTP might consider how to better communicate its approach to treating trauma, relevance of therapist/lived experience, professional and collective identities and enactive healing-justice approaches to sexual violence.

Link

Topic: a survey of torture prevention mechanisms in South Africa.

Summary: an investigation undertaken on behalf of a South African organisation, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, that is at the forefront of supporting torture survivors and guiding law and practice to prevent and investigate torture, and hold perpetrators accountable. This study reviewed current practice to prevent and investigate torture in police, prison, immigration, psychiatric, youth justice and anti-terror detention. Recommendations supported South Africa’s preparations to ratify an international treaty to prevent torture, the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Link.

Topic: torture prevention under international law.

Summary: This co-authored report was published by the Association for the Prevention of Torture, an influential international organisation in Geneva with a unique overview and expertise on torture and ill-treatment. It examined and explained the provisions of an international torture prevention treaty, in order to assist governments, administrative and justice systems and civil society to act effectively to prevent torture.

Link.

Amnesty International. 2004. Bahamas. Forgotten detainees: human rights in detention.

Amnesty International. 2003. Jamaica. ‘Until their voices are heard’. Report of the West Kingston Commission of Inquiry. (Co-authored).

Amnesty International. 2002. Guyana. Human rights and crime control: not mutually exclusive.

Amnesty International. 2001. Jamaica. Killings and violence by police: how many more victims?.

Amnesty International. 1999. USA. ‘Not part of my sentence’: Violations of the human rights of women in custody. (research assistant).

Amnesty International. 1998. USA. Betraying the young. Human rights violations against children in the US juvenile justice system. (research assistant).

Betraying the young: human rights violations against children in the US juvenile justice system