The Bilingual Forum was established in 2010. It meets twice a year online or in London. There is no charge for attendance at the Forum. If you wish to be added to the mailing list for the Forum, please email: beverley@pasaloproject.org
Our next two meetings will take place in 2023, in February and April.
1. The first date is online: Thursday, February 9th from 5pm to 6pm UK time when Natasha Nascimento will be talking about her doctoral research on Multilingualism and Family Therapy.
Exploration of children’s, interpreters' and group members' voices and position in multilingual multi-family groups
Dr Natasha Nascimento is a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, working in the Family Trauma Team. Dr Nascimento has worked in the NHS for over 16 years in CAMHS. Her doctorate research was on ‘Group Cohesion in Multifamily Therapy with Multilingual Families’.
We will send out a Zoom link to this session nearer the time.
2. The second date is for an in-person session on the topic of Language and Trauma. This will take place in Bloomsbury, London at Birkbeck, University of London on Wednesday, April 12th from 2pm to 4pm. We are very fortunate to be able to extend our welcome to Professor Brigitta Busch and Prof. Dr. Judith Purkarthofer who will give the presentations on Language and Trauma followed by a question and answer session.
Bilingual Therapist & Interpreter Forum
Language and Trauma
Wednesday April 12th 2023
14:00 to 16:00
Room B18, Birkbeck, University of London Malet St, London WC1E 7HX https://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps
Visualizing linguistic repertoires: Working with Language Portraits in trauma-informed counselling and psychotherapy
Different communicative resources (languages, sociolects, regiolects, family idioms…) that are connected to lived experience and therefore emotionally loaded constitute what we call the linguistic repertoire. The drawing of Language Portraits helps to reflect upon the repertoire and its biographic ramifications beyond habitualized discursive patterns. This can have therapeutic benefits for clients and patients who are able to use their linguistic repertoire for repair and healing.
Brigitta Busch is an applied linguist. She works and teaches at Vienna University and is also affiliated to Stellenbosch University (South Africa). In 2012 she was granted a Berta-Karlik research professorship for excellent female scientists by the University of Vienna. She has also been working for many years as an expert for the Council of Europe’s Confidence-Building Measures Programme and was a member of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.
Judith Purkarthofer works in multilingualism studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her focus is on multilingual families and lived experience of language across the lifespan. She employs and discusses approaches that allow an understanding of children’s and adults’ voices in research, most recently in Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research: Biographical and Speaker-centred Approaches (edited by Judith Purkarthofer & Mi-Cha Flubacher, 2022 at Multilingual Matters).
Please tell your colleagues and ask them to let me know if they want to attend so that I can add them to the Bilingual Forum list. Only those on the list are able to be admitted to the sessions.
On July 7th, 2022, we held the 23rd Bilingual Forum for Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters with the theme The aftermath for interpreters in highly demanding emotional situations.
This was the introduction to the Forum meeting:
This event tells a story. It begins with the experience of interpreters and the aftermath from their work on their professional and their personal lives. It ends with an account of effectively addressing this aftermath.
The following texts are some of the presentations which told the story.
If you have any comments or questions, please email: beverley@pasaloproject.org
presentation_1.doc
presentation_2.docx
presentation_3.docx
presentation_4.docx
Previous Bilingual Forum meetings
Bilingual Forum Thursday November 18th, 2021 (5pm to 6.30pm UK time)
"The Multilingual Experience of Children and Young People" Perspectives from Clinical Psychology and Speech and Language Therapy
Bilingual Forum Tuesday April 13th, 2021
“The languages we use and the languages we lose – implications for psychological therapies”
Language loss across generations Dr Susan Samata, author of the Cultural Memory of Language Susan’s current research interests are in the role of language loss, or attrition, as part of a wider ecology of language.
Negotiating the language(s) for psychotherapy talk Dr Louise Rolland, Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London Louise currently lectures on bilingualism at the University of Greenwich.
Bilingual Forum, November 25th, 2020
Adam Schoem (University of Alcalá) gave a presentation from his research: "The Importance of Self-care and Mental Health Education for Interpreters"
Adam shared the results of his research project, and discussed different aspects of work stress, self-care, and methods of learning about self-care for interpreters.
Bilingual Forum 16th June 2020
Languages of survival and pain - how do torture survivors speak of the unspeakable?
The Forum session on Tuesday, 16th June, focused on the linguistic issues for torture survivors and the implications for mental health practice.
First, a presentation and interview with Dr Sally Cook about her research on the language choices of torture survivors within a therapeutic community. In the second part, an interview with Nathalie Talbot, an interpreter with many years of experience interpreting for survivors of torture.
Bilingual Forum for Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters
A National Forum for Bilingual Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters was established in 2010 to share learning and improve standards and practice. The Forum provides a space for ideas, experience, learning and good practice across languages to be shared and to offer a source of support and a network of supervision in a variety of languages.
The Forum meetings focus on a range of issues including:
Our next two meetings will be happening in 2023, in February and April.
1. The first date is online: Thursday, February 9th from 5pm to 6pm UK time when Natasha Nascimento will be talking about her doctoral research on Multilingualism and Family Therapy.
Exploration of children’s, interpreters' and group members' voices and position in multilingual multi-family groups
Dr Natasha Nascimento is a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, working in the Family Trauma Team. Dr Nascimento has worked in the NHS for over 16 years in CAMHS. Her doctorate research was on ‘Group Cohesion in Multifamily Therapy with Multilingual Families’.
I will send out a Zoom link to this session nearer the time.
2. The second date is for an in-person session (possibly with live streaming) on the topic of Language and Trauma. This will take place in Bloomsbury, London at Birkbeck, University of London on Wednesday, April 12th from 2pm to 4pm. We are very fortunate to be able to extend our welcome to Professor Brigitta Busch https://heteroglossia.net/Brigitta-Busch.8.0.html and Prof. Dr. Judith Purkarthofer https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Speaking-Subjects-in-Multilingualism-Research/?k=9781800415713 who will give the presentations on Language and Trauma followed by a question and answer session. More details to follow.
Please tell your colleagues and ask them to let me know if they want to attend so that I can add them to the Bilingual Forum list. Only those on the list are able to be admitted to the sessions.
Our next two meetings will take place in 2023, in February and April.
1. The first date is online: Thursday, February 9th from 5pm to 6pm UK time when Natasha Nascimento will be talking about her doctoral research on Multilingualism and Family Therapy.
Exploration of children’s, interpreters' and group members' voices and position in multilingual multi-family groups
Dr Natasha Nascimento is a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, working in the Family Trauma Team. Dr Nascimento has worked in the NHS for over 16 years in CAMHS. Her doctorate research was on ‘Group Cohesion in Multifamily Therapy with Multilingual Families’.
We will send out a Zoom link to this session nearer the time.
2. The second date is for an in-person session on the topic of Language and Trauma. This will take place in Bloomsbury, London at Birkbeck, University of London on Wednesday, April 12th from 2pm to 4pm. We are very fortunate to be able to extend our welcome to Professor Brigitta Busch and Prof. Dr. Judith Purkarthofer who will give the presentations on Language and Trauma followed by a question and answer session.
Bilingual Therapist & Interpreter Forum
Language and Trauma
Wednesday April 12th 2023
14:00 to 16:00
Room B18, Birkbeck, University of London Malet St, London WC1E 7HX https://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps
Visualizing linguistic repertoires: Working with Language Portraits in trauma-informed counselling and psychotherapy
Different communicative resources (languages, sociolects, regiolects, family idioms…) that are connected to lived experience and therefore emotionally loaded constitute what we call the linguistic repertoire. The drawing of Language Portraits helps to reflect upon the repertoire and its biographic ramifications beyond habitualized discursive patterns. This can have therapeutic benefits for clients and patients who are able to use their linguistic repertoire for repair and healing.
Brigitta Busch is an applied linguist. She works and teaches at Vienna University and is also affiliated to Stellenbosch University (South Africa). In 2012 she was granted a Berta-Karlik research professorship for excellent female scientists by the University of Vienna. She has also been working for many years as an expert for the Council of Europe’s Confidence-Building Measures Programme and was a member of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.
Judith Purkarthofer works in multilingualism studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her focus is on multilingual families and lived experience of language across the lifespan. She employs and discusses approaches that allow an understanding of children’s and adults’ voices in research, most recently in Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research: Biographical and Speaker-centred Approaches (edited by Judith Purkarthofer & Mi-Cha Flubacher, 2022 at Multilingual Matters).
Please tell your colleagues and ask them to let me know if they want to attend so that I can add them to the Bilingual Forum list. Only those on the list are able to be admitted to the sessions.
On July 7th, 2022, we held the 23rd Bilingual Forum for Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters with the theme The aftermath for interpreters in highly demanding emotional situations.
This was the introduction to the Forum meeting:
This event tells a story. It begins with the experience of interpreters and the aftermath from their work on their professional and their personal lives. It ends with an account of effectively addressing this aftermath.
The following texts are some of the presentations which told the story.
- An account from an interpreter called Guida Shields about how the work, interpreting in a Child Protection context, has an impact on her.
- A description by Irina Norton and Beverley Costa of an initiative to support interpreters and a project to train interpreters to facilitate this type of support themselves.
- An account from an interpreter called Marina Burgess who participated in training to become an interpreter-facilitator.
- The experiences of an interpreter called Zora Jackman who, after finishing the training, went on to deliver support to groups of interpreters herself.
If you have any comments or questions, please email: beverley@pasaloproject.org
presentation_1.doc
presentation_2.docx
presentation_3.docx
presentation_4.docx
Previous Bilingual Forum meetings
Bilingual Forum Thursday November 18th, 2021 (5pm to 6.30pm UK time)
"The Multilingual Experience of Children and Young People" Perspectives from Clinical Psychology and Speech and Language Therapy
Bilingual Forum Tuesday April 13th, 2021
“The languages we use and the languages we lose – implications for psychological therapies”
Language loss across generations Dr Susan Samata, author of the Cultural Memory of Language Susan’s current research interests are in the role of language loss, or attrition, as part of a wider ecology of language.
Negotiating the language(s) for psychotherapy talk Dr Louise Rolland, Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London Louise currently lectures on bilingualism at the University of Greenwich.
Bilingual Forum, November 25th, 2020
Adam Schoem (University of Alcalá) gave a presentation from his research: "The Importance of Self-care and Mental Health Education for Interpreters"
Adam shared the results of his research project, and discussed different aspects of work stress, self-care, and methods of learning about self-care for interpreters.
Bilingual Forum 16th June 2020
Languages of survival and pain - how do torture survivors speak of the unspeakable?
The Forum session on Tuesday, 16th June, focused on the linguistic issues for torture survivors and the implications for mental health practice.
First, a presentation and interview with Dr Sally Cook about her research on the language choices of torture survivors within a therapeutic community. In the second part, an interview with Nathalie Talbot, an interpreter with many years of experience interpreting for survivors of torture.
Bilingual Forum for Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters
A National Forum for Bilingual Therapists and Mental Health Interpreters was established in 2010 to share learning and improve standards and practice. The Forum provides a space for ideas, experience, learning and good practice across languages to be shared and to offer a source of support and a network of supervision in a variety of languages.
The Forum meetings focus on a range of issues including:
- Language switching and its meaning
- Languages in which trauma is experienced and in which trauma is recalled
- The possibility of expressing different and additional emotions in different languages
- The interpreter’s role in the therapeutic alliance
- Language as a transitional object
- Language, communication and power
- People’s identities and relationships with different languages
Our next two meetings will be happening in 2023, in February and April.
1. The first date is online: Thursday, February 9th from 5pm to 6pm UK time when Natasha Nascimento will be talking about her doctoral research on Multilingualism and Family Therapy.
Exploration of children’s, interpreters' and group members' voices and position in multilingual multi-family groups
Dr Natasha Nascimento is a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, working in the Family Trauma Team. Dr Nascimento has worked in the NHS for over 16 years in CAMHS. Her doctorate research was on ‘Group Cohesion in Multifamily Therapy with Multilingual Families’.
I will send out a Zoom link to this session nearer the time.
2. The second date is for an in-person session (possibly with live streaming) on the topic of Language and Trauma. This will take place in Bloomsbury, London at Birkbeck, University of London on Wednesday, April 12th from 2pm to 4pm. We are very fortunate to be able to extend our welcome to Professor Brigitta Busch https://heteroglossia.net/Brigitta-Busch.8.0.html and Prof. Dr. Judith Purkarthofer https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Speaking-Subjects-in-Multilingualism-Research/?k=9781800415713 who will give the presentations on Language and Trauma followed by a question and answer session. More details to follow.
Please tell your colleagues and ask them to let me know if they want to attend so that I can add them to the Bilingual Forum list. Only those on the list are able to be admitted to the sessions.