Maya Mukamel is full-time lecturer and researcher in Goldsmiths, University of London. She has been managing a private psychotherapy practice for 15 years, working with a widely diverse client population. She combines psychodynamic work with focusing-oriented psychotherapy and third wave CBT. Maya is a Gender Studies scholar, integrating critical cultural theory in her teaching, research, and clinical practice. Her research includes areas such as political trauma, history and politics of psychoanalytic concepts, the role of mental health professionals in the struggle against torture, gender identity, and politics and gender in psychotherapy. Maya is especially interested in the theory and practice of social and political activism of mental health practitioners. She co-founded Psychoactive: Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights in Israel in 2006, led a project focusing on Palestinian youth in military detention, volunteered in The Public Committee against Torture in Israel, and is a trainer for using the Istanbul Protocol, a manual for assessing physical and psychological effects of torture.
Gender and Trauma course:
This course introduces students to the relations between gender and trauma. In line with contemporary trauma-focused research, theory, and practice, it introduces a perspective that approaches the political, cultural, and social dimensions of trauma. In particular, it demonstrates how gendered politics, societies, and cultures affect the definition of trauma, the social recognition of trauma, the risk of suffering trauma, the treatment of trauma and policies related to health, safety, and wellbeing. It endorses intercultural and intersectional perspectives to demonstrate how the understanding of links between gender and trauma are translated into culturally and politically informed interventions.
