Conversations with the psychologists Inger Agger and Shari Eppel on their life-long work

Nunca Más – Network for International Human Rights and Psychosocial Response and Mellemfolkeligt samvirke are very proud to invite you to meet two extraordinary psychologists who have dedicated their lives to the work against political violence. Inger Agger, (Ph. D. co-founder of Nun-ca Mas) and Shari Eppel, Director of the Zimbabwean development and human rights organiza-tion, Ukuthula Trust. They will both tell about their fascinating trajectories and their motivation for continuing the work in this important but challenging field.

Before the conversation begins, singer-songwriter Alberto Laínez will play some songs for all of us to get us in the right mood.

PROGRAM:
19:30: Welcome and presentation of Nunca Más by Jan Ole Haagensen – (Nunca Más Co-founder)
19:40: Music by Alberto Laínez
20:00: Interactions with Shari Eppel and Inger Agger

You will meet:

Shari Eppel:
For the past 25 years, Shari has worked with the Gukurahundi massacres in Zimbabwe, where be-tween 10.000 and 20.000 were killed and at least just as many raped or wounded in the middle of the 1980´s.
This has been done with documentation of the concrete events, who were the victims/survivors, where were they buried, as well as, not the least, the treatment of survivors, healings of families and local communities. Whole communities were often traumatized due to the event. In this re-gard, helping families to get to terms with their ancestral spirits, haunting them because the mur-dered were not properly buried, has been crucial. Reburials have, therefore, been undertaken as an central part of the healing process. That is why Shari has become a forensic anthropologist as well.

Shari will provide insights from her years of work with testimony/historical memory in a human rights’ perspective as well as healing, empowerment and justice. She will give some ideas to how a mental health specialist like a psychologist can contribute in this regard.

Inger Agger PhD
She is licensed psychologist, senior expert and associate at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies in Copenhagen (NIAS) and one of the founders of Nunca Más.

Inger has for many years worked in different capacities with testimonies as a method in relation to victims/survivors from rape, torture, and other forms of collective violence internationally. She will provide insights on the work she carried out for among other the Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims (RCT) today DIGNITY: Danish Institute against Torture and its subse-quent development in Asia. Together with Nunca Más, a few years she brought back the testimony therapy to Latin-America where it originated. In Honduras, it was now used together with the Len-cas, the country’s biggest indigenous people.

Inger will tell us about her work and how it has, over the years, evolved organically with a focus on (historical) memory in therapy and other forms of intervention for survivors of political or struc-tural violence.

Alberto Laínez (Proyecto Aullador)

Alberto is an environmental engineer and musician from Honduras who has been on tours in Cen-tral America and Europe several times. His music is dedicated to topics such as empowerment, environmental issues and marginalized people’s struggle for safeguarding their rights and protect-ing their environment.

Note: The door opens at 18:00. You can buy something to eat at a reasonable price. Beer and drinks can also be purchased during the event.

OBS.:The event takes place in English