As a team of Narrative, Dialogical and Collaborative therapists, we are committed to creating networks of solidarity. We are therefore delighted to host a hybrid presentation and workshop with Shelja Sen on Saturday 24 May 2025!

About Shelja Sen and her work
Shelja is a narrative therapist, writer and international faculty member at Dulwich Centre (Adelaide, Australia). Based in New Delhi, India, she is one of the co-founders of Children First; one of India’s leading community based mental health services. Through exploring personal agency, thickening alternative storylines, and collective documenting, Shelja demonstrates throughout her work how conversations that started in the therapy room can create ripple effects in the broader sociocultural and political contexts.

Presentation and workshop
As a keynote speaker at the Conference of Narrative Therapy and Community Work ‘Journeys and Hope’ last year (July 4-5, Liverpool, UK), Shelja’s collective narrative practice inspired many of the attendees. For NDC2, Shelja will present her inspiring work with and alongside young women who are navigating experiences of trauma, gender-based violence and pressure to conform to patriarchal conceptions of success. Together, they developed a journey metaphor that enables women to reclaim their lives from the objectifying gaze of normative judgments. Their collective practice resulted in the project Just Girls. We invite you to join us with Shelja and the young women she works with in challenging the societal status quo and creating ever-expanding ripples of justice, solidarity and hope.

This initiative is hybrid in character.

The first part is an online presentation open to people who are comfortable in their English speaking and listening skills and have internet access to join online. For those joining us in Rotterdam (see below), internet access will be provided and participants will attend the meeting collectively.

The second part is an in-person Dutch spoken workshop where the attendants will have an opportunity to put Shelja’s ideas into practice. Participants will be invited to reflect and build on the underlying ethics and therapeutic principles informing Just Girls. This subsequent exercise aims to familiarize, inspire and support mental health practitioners with how collective narrative practices can provide therapeutic leverage in a range of professional contexts.

Participants can choose to enlist for the online presentation only, or to also engage in the subsequent reflective practice that will build on the ethical and therapeutic principles that inform Just Girls.

Deelnemen kan voor de online presentatie apart, dan wel voor de online lezing in combinatie met de daaropvolgende workshop.

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