Author Biographies
GRACE AKELLO is a PhD Student affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Social Research and Leiden University Medical Center. ANNEMIEK RICHTERS is professor of culture, health and illness at the Department of Public health and Primary care, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. She is also Fellow-in-Residence 2007/8 at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS). RIA REIS is associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, specialised in medical anthropology, focusing in particular on children.
MARY BOCK is an Honorary Research Associate in the English Department at the University of Cape Town. Her research interests include the eighteenth-century English novel, stylistics, discourse analysis and the analysis of oral and written narrative. She has published work on aspects of language use in the narratives told at the TRC Human Rights Violations hearings.
DAVID EDWARDS is a Clinical Psychologist and cognitive therapist who has taught at Rhodes University since 1971. His current research is on the development of a contextualised evidence-base for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in South Africa. This was the focus of a 2005 special issue of the Journal of Psychology in Africa, of which he was guest editor.
ANGELO FERRILLO is a teacher of English language and literature. He holds a PhD in “Anglophone literatures and cultures” (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) with a dissertation on the representation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in literature and cinema. His research interests span from memory in literature and deconstruction to cultural and postcolonial studies.
JENNIFER N. FISH is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Old Dominion University. Her work focuses upon South Africa’s post-1994 transition, with particular emphasis on women’s contributions to reconciliation and nation building. She is the author of Domestic democracy: At home in South Africa (2006) and the co-editor of Women's activism in South Africa: Working across divides (2008).
DON FOSTER is Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. He has written quite extensively on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and on perpetrators of gross violations of human rights. A much earlier publication was on detention and torture in South Africa. One of his recent books is “The Theatre of Violence”.
PUMLA GOBODO-MADIKIZELA is a Clinical Psychologist and teaches at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on psychological trauma and the relational dynamics of empathy and forgiveness in the aftermath of political conflict and trauma.
PAULA GREEN holds joint appointments as Professor of Conflict Transformation at the School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute and founder-director of the NGO Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, both in the US. At SIT she created the CONTACT (Conflict Transformation across Cultures) summer institute and professional certificate programs. A psychologist, Dr. Green leads peacebuilding, dialogue and reconciliation seminars worldwide.
CHARLES L. GRISWOLD is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is author of Self-knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus (Yale University Press, 1986), Adam Smith and the virtues of enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and editor of Platonic writings, Platonic readings (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1988). His latest book, Forgiveness: A philosophical exploration, was published by Cambridge University Press in August 2007.
Griswold has been Visiting Professor at the Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Olmsted Visiting Professor in Ethics at Yale University, and a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center
BEATA HAMMERICH, born in 1957 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, is a Psychoanalyst in Cologne, Germany. BERND SONNTAG, born in 1953 in Braunschweig, Germany, is a Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist in Cologne, Germany. He is Vice-head of the Department for Psychosomatic and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne. ERDA SIEBERT, born in 1944 in Dresden, Germany, is a Psychoanalyst in Düsseldorf, Germany. JOHANNES PFÄFFLIN, born in 1950 in Calw, Germany, is a Psychoanalyst in Düsseldorf. PETER POGANY-WNENDT, born in 1954 in Budapest, Hungary, is a Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist in Cologne, Germany. They are all members of the board of PAKH,
(Psychotherapeutic Study Group of Persons Affected by the Holocaust).
DENNIS B. KLEIN is director of the Jewish Studies program and professor of history at Kean University in New Jersey. He is author of four books, including Jewish origins of the psychoanalytic movement (University of Chicago Press, 1985) and Hidden history of the Kovno Ghetto (Little, Brown in cooperation with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997). He is founding editor in chief of Dimensions: A journal of holocaust studies and founding director of the Anti-defamation League's Braun Center for Holocaust Studies.
EWALD MENGEL is Professor of English Literature at the University of Vienna, Austria. Besides numerous articles, he has published books on Pinter, the English historical novel, Charles Dickens, translations of German dramas into English, the eighteenth-century novel and twentieth-century British drama. His current research interests include the theory of cultural transfer, IT applications in English studies and the contemporary South African novel.
JENNY PARKES is a Lecturer in Education, Gender and International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her specialist interest is in research with young people living in violent neighbourhoods, with a particular focus on South Africa. Selected publications include “Tensions and troubles in young people’s talk about safety and danger in a violent neighbourhood”, Journal of Youth Studies (2007); “The multiple meanings of violence: Children’s talk about life in a South African neighbourhood”, Childhood (2007); and “The power of talk: Transformative possibilities in researching violence with children in South Africa” International Journal of Social Research Methodology (forthcoming).
MARLEEN RAMSEY is currently Director of Transitional Studies at Walla Walla Community College. She has been a psychology faculty member at WWCC for the past two decades as well as an adjunct at Walla Walla University and Gonzaga University.
KAY SCHAFFER is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Gender, Work and Social Inquiry, School of Social Studies at the University of Adelaide and in the Hawke Centre, University of South Australia. She works in the areas of gender studies, cultural studies and literary studies. Her most recent work concerns the significance of personal testimony and storytelling in human rights campaigns and contexts, including narratives of recovery emanating from China, South Africa and Australia. Her latest book, Human rights and narrated lives: The ethics of recognition, was co-authored with Sidonie Smith (Palgrave, 2004). A collection of her feminist essays, Women, the Bush and Australian History (Guangxi University Press) will be published in China as a part of an international feminist scholar series in 2008.
JILL SCOTT is Associate Professor of German at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Scott is the author of Electra after Freud: Myth and culture (Cornell University Press, 2005). She received the prestigious Canada Council Aurora Prize for her current research project entitled “A poetics of forgiveness: Creativity and conflict resolution”. She has also published widely on German and Austrian Modernism.
APRIL SIZEMORE-BARBER is currently completing her doctorate in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include theatre for development, memory, and performance of gender and post-apartheid identity. She has collaborated with Khulumani (Soweto) and Bokomoso (Winterveldt) youth theatre groups on social-justice theatre pieces.
ELAINE UNTERHALTER is a Reader in Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London. Trained as a historian, she has worked on aspects of class, race and gender in South African society, specialising in aspects of education and the wider debates concerning international development and global social justice. Selected publications include Gender, schooling and global social justice (Routledge, 2007); Beyond Access (Oxfam, 2005, co-edited with S. Aikman), and “The work of the nation: Heroic masculinity in South African autobiographical writing of the Anti-apartheid struggle”, European Journal of Development Research (2000).
CHRIS VAN DER MERWE teaches Afrikaans and Dutch Literature at the University of Cape Town. His current research focuses on Literature and Trauma, and he is the co-author of the book Narrating our healing: Perspectives on working through trauma (2007). He has lectured at many universities in Europe and the United States, and for his radio talks on South African Literature he received the Book Journalist of the Year award in 1994.
VAMIK D. VOLKAN is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, Washington, DC, and Senior Erik Erikson Scholar, Erikson Institute of Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Kuopio University, Finland and Ankara University, Turkey. He is the author of over 400 papers or chapters and 40 books. His latest books include Killing in the name of identity: Stories of bloody conflicts.
