CONFERENCE' SPEAKERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Professor Pat Dudgeon

Pat Dudgeon is from the Bardi people in Western Australia. She is a psychologist and professor at the Poche Centre for Aboriginal Health and the School of Indigenous Studies at UWA. Her area of research includes Indigenous social and emotional well-being and suicide prevention.

She is the director of the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention at UWA. She is also the lead chief investigator of a national research project, Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing that aims to develop approaches to Indigenous mental health services that promote cultural values and strengths as well as empower users. She has many publications in Indigenous mental health, in particular, the Working Together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing Principals and Practice 2014.

PLENARY SPEAKERS

Dr. Ryan Chua

Dr. Ryan is the Programme Director in Pusat KOMAS, a local human rights civil-society organization in Malaysia which advocates for equality and justice. He was previously responsible for the research, monitoring and reporting of the issues of racial discrimination Malaysia. He also organized, supported, and participated in several ASEAN civil society programmes and managed several non-discrimination projects in Pusat KOMAS. Dr. Ryan was also responsible for the development of the “Code of Conduct for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities through the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” and the “Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Monitoring Framework” which was adopted by the Penang state government and the Malaysian government respectively. He also provides non-discrimination (anti-racism) and human rights education to marginalized communities (Orang Asli), university students and governmental agencies.
Dr. Ryan is also an adjunct lecturer in Monash University Malaysia. He completed his PhD in Psychology at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, examining the psychological resilience mechanisms and processes of the Semai indigenous communities in Peninsular Malaysia. His research interests include areas related to cross-cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, resilience and indigenous communities and racism and discrimination. Dr. Ryan was also a member of the scientific committee of the 1st and 2nd Southeast Asian Indigenous Psychology Scientific Meeting.

Dr. Robert Lemelson

Dr. Robert Lemelson is an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA whose work explores the relationship of culture and history to trauma, psychiatric illness, structural and gender-based violence, and their relationship to subjectivity and phenomenology. He is also a visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker with over 25 years of experience conducting fieldwork.

He has completed over 15 films on a wide range of topics including mental illness, polygamy and gender-based violence, the sex trade, genocide, kinship and ritual, neurodiversity, and trance and possession. He is also the co-editor of three volumes with Cambridge University Press: “Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives” and “Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health” and “Culture, Mind and Brain: Emerging Concepts, Models and Applications”. His newest book, “Widening the Frame: Visual Psychological Anthropology Perspectives on Trauma, Gendered Violence and Stigma in Indonesia,” was published in 2021 by Palgrave Press.