July 21-25, 2025
Call for applications: December 2, 2024 – March 20, 2025
Amid the prevailing global instability, the immediate repercussions of warfare and political violence have echoed, sparking conflicts and precipitating substantial forced migration. This reality is starkly manifest across the globe, epitomized by the enduring conflict and extensive displacement observed in the war-ravaged region of Gaza. Furthermore, the conflict in Ukraine serves as another poignant manifestation of this tumult, highlighting the widespread prevalence of violence and displacement in modern society. Conflicts and wars have plunged the planet into a vortex of environmental, climate, societal, gender, and racial crises, undermining human rights and self-determination on a global scale. Mental health and human rights are dramatically interlocked constructs. There is no mental well-being without peace and equity and vice versa. Mental prosperity seems to be thought of as a consolidated right just for privileged groups; in contrast, oppressed and marginalized individuals most often resulted in being blamed for their incapability to handle their living conditions and adjust to challenges and adversities because of a lack of civilization, poor personal and social capital or inadequate relational skills.
More recently, critical global mental health and global public health have recognized the urgent need to analyze and intervene in the political determinants and antecedents of cogent global challenges of our contemporaneity including war and structural violence. In addition, transnational and intersectional feminist and postcolonial perspectives have exposed patriarchal whiteness as the dominant grammar informing the mainstream of psychology and psychiatry, unveiling the extractivist strategies of the so-called essentialist culture and performed gender-sensitive protocols. Indigenous and postcolonial participatory approaches propose themselves as a genuine alternative to conceptual and intervention models aiming at re-socializing and readapting people to iniquitous and unjust classist and racialized living conditions.
Our approach is to foster a psychology of liberation that will provide theoretical and practical participatory tools to enable the adaptation and control of indigenous and self-determined models to understand mental health in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and societies undergoing or coming to terms with political turbulence, war, and social upheaval.
Faculty
Guido Veronese, University of Milano-Bicocca
Alex L. Pieterse, Boston College
Ashraf Kagee, Stellenbosch University
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Stellenbosch University.
Guest speakers
Yasser Abu Jamei, Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
Nadera Shaloub Kevorkian, Princeton University and Queen Mary University of London.
Tutor
Chiara Fiscone, University of Milano-Bicocca.
Who is it for?
Applications are welcome from PhD students, young researchers and practitioners working in mental health, international relations, law, gender and race studies, social work, education, psychology, psychiatry, environmental and climate studies, political science, public health, nursing, global health and mental health. The school is also open to activist individuals and groups, policy and decision-makers, NGOs and CBOs, stakeholders and influencers seeking to strengthen their knowledge and know-how on global mental health, human rights, and allied disciplines.
Learning outcomes for participants
On successful completion of the Summer School, the students will be able to:
Knowledge
- define and understand the fundamental concepts, principles and tools of Liberation Psychology, radical feminism, and critical theories in public and global mental health;
- assume concepts of class, race, gender, culture, identity, and diversity concerning indigenous and intersectional approaches;
- assume the fundamental concepts of global mental health in societies undergoing or coming to terms with geopolitical turmoils, gender disparities, economic disadvantages, and climate changes
- analyze and form critical perspectives about Global Mental Health and Human Rights through the synthesis of different disciplines
- identify areas of quality research pertaining to mental health and human rights
Skills
- Plan and develop research project using multidisciplinary research methodologies;
- locate multi-method (quantitative, qualitative and participatory) research approaches;
- critically discuss systems of oppression and privilege that inform global challenges on gender, race, class and environment as a focus of the school;
- rising self-awareness and conscientization about personal and group positioning in their disciplinary field and community;
- collaborate effectively as a part of professional teams in interdisciplinary and international contexts.
Application and actionability of knowledge and skills
- Analyze and develop contextually appropriate and culturally appropriate theories relevant to areas of the world where research on global mental health and human rights is necessary
- demonstrate a critical reflection on professional knowledge and skills integrating broad subject knowledge and perspectives
- advocate for mental health and social justice as an agenda item in human rights campaign in participants’ institutions and communities.
Credits
A Certificate of attendance will be issued at the end of the course.
Number of ECTS credits allocated: 2
The Program will admit 25 participants.
Fees
Students of VIU member universities:
€ 400 incl. VAT.
Students of other universities:
€ 800 incl. VAT.
The fees will cover tuition, course materials, lunches in the VIU cafeteria and social events.
Student participants will be responsible for covering their own travel expenses to and from Venice, accommodation, and local transportation.
VIU Alumni are eligible for a reduced fee.
PhD candidates and post-docs from universities in EU universities may be eligible for Erasmus+ mobility grant support. Candidates should consult the International Office in their own university for information about the calls for applications for funding as well as for possible scholarships. VIU will provide any supporting documentation requested for such applications. Contact VIU Erasmus office: erasmus@univiu.org
Applicants must submit the application form, a letter of motivation – which should include a brief description of the candidate’s research interests, a curriculum vitae and a photo.
For further information, please download the brochure or write to: summerschools@univiu.org
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