UNESCO Webinar Series 2023

The UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project and the Global Humanity for Peace Institute, University of Wales Trinity St David (UWTSD), are jointly hosting an exciting international webinar series entitled: New Perspectives on Collective Healing, Social Justice and Well-Being. These webinars are supported by AfroSpectives: A Global Africa Initiative, and Spirit of Humanity Forum.

Aims

This series of interactive sessions seeks to explore the shifting landscape of knowledge, indigenous and cultural wisdom, emergent practices, and research findings concerning the potentials and challenges of collective healing to address the legacies of dehumanisation, promote racial equity and social justice, and advance global well-being. 

Each session will expand on our understanding of the key contextual, conceptual, methodological and practical issues related to the memories and legacies of transatlantic slavery and coloniality. The speakers will discuss the imperative, opportunities and challenges of collective healing. The series together will introduce and propose restorative and regenerative practices of healing at personal, communal, institutional, societal and planetary levels.

Spaces, Interaction and Process

The series is conceived to be a monthly seminar via Zoom with worldwide participants, aimed at inspiring global engagement in collective healing from grassroots community initiatives, to NGOs’ work, and to institutional and national processes.

  • The webinar will be held online via Zoom, lasting for 60-90 mins.  
  • Each seminar will be set within particular contexts (e.g. conceptual, historical, practical, regional, present and future challenges and opportunities, and so forth) and located within communities’ needs for collective healing.
  • After the presentations, dialogue amongst the speakers and with participants will follow, including addressing key emergent questions.

Each webinar will seek to encompass 5 key areas:

  1. Contextualisation (the historical, e.g. the transatlantic tragedies; the enduring legacies of slavery and colonial occupation, e.g. poverty and disenfranchisement, present difficulties, e.g. racism, polarisation, and so on; ); 
  2. Conceptualisation (understanding the existing conceptual landscape about the imperative of collective healing, including major contemporary scholarly debates, and tensions between key paradigms); 
  3. Approaches (exploring existing and emerging practices of collective healing, social justice and well-being in global communities, and institutions, including significant collaborative programmes, and how traditional and indigenous knowledge and practices have helped strengthen sustain and regenerate communities); 
  4. Challenges & Opportunities (systemic dehumanisation, capitalist political economy, laws, institutional cultures, education, ideology, etc.); 
  5. Commitments to Action (who can do what, when, where and how…). 

All webinars will have simultaneous translation in English, French and Spanish. 

The Global Humanity for Peace Institute at the University of Wales Trinity St David will provide technical and translation support to the webinar series.

Speakers

Distinguished and inspirational speakers (including scholars, researchers, activists and practitioners) will be invited to offer articulations on the imperative of collective healing, provide in-depth analysis of the specific challenges arising from the field, and reflect upon the ways that communities, NGOs, institutions, and governments might collaborate to address the collective trauma and embrace collective healing.

Themes

The webinar series have touched upon the following themes:

Simultaneous interpretation in English, French and Spanish will be provided.