This international workshop grows out of the research project "The Effects of Violence and Impoverishment on Psychosocial Health among Pastoralist Communities in Northern Kenya" funded by the programme. This additional workshop, not included in the origin al project budget, aims to bring together a group of prominent scholars across the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, psychology and medical history around the topic of trauma.
By engaging different case studies from specific ethnographic scenari os from both the so-called North and South, we explore the ways in which trauma is culturally elaborated, and how this should influence theorizing and analysis. The contributions to the workshop will be published internationally in an edited volume.
We also envision that the participants will form the core of partners in developing a new research project around trauma cross-culturally. The overall objective and applied value of the workshop is to contribute improving the diagnosis, treatment and therap eutic regimes offered refugees from war-torn areas, whether they reside in their own countries or are given protection and a new home abroad in Norway, Europe or the USA.
This workshop is thus highly relevant to the objectives of the NFR programme on men tal health, and contributes to expanding the activities of a research project already funded by it. As an important aim of the workshop is to lay the foundations for future cooperation with the participants, it is a central instrument to produce new knowl edge on the topic outline above, as well as for developing publications and new research projects with the participants as international partners.