PRESENTATION: 2021 – The Year of our Intersectional Identities
We live in a challenging age, with the death of George Floyd, the subsequent marches across the world against racism, the struggles of the #Metoo movement, campaigns for equal rights for the LGBTQ community, and the rise of Disability theorists. Yet, all these efforts towards equality in the face of varying types of oppression speak loudly of the voices of the others and their need to be heard and acknowledged.
It could be considered though that trainings around difference and diversity have been slow in turning their considerable talents towards exploring or understanding the complexities of these overlapping issues, and how privilege and otherness influences these discussions, often doing no more than to mirror the wider societal oppressions we all witness daily. Drawing upon the ideas of intersectional theory, this keynote presentation explores the importance of bringing this theory together with the skills embedded within counselling and psychotherapy as we together develop a language to assist professionals in finding the language to discuss issues of privilege and other.
About Dr Dwight Turner
Dr Dwight Turner is Senior Lecturer within the School of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, lecturing on their PG Dip and MSc courses in Counselling and Psychotherapy, a PhD Supervisor at their Doctoral College, a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice, and a part-time lecturer at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education (CCPE) in London. He completed his PhD through the University of Northampton and the CCPE in 2017. His phenomenological and heuristic study used transpersonal and creative techniques such as visualisations, drawing and sand play work to explore the unconscious intersectional nature of privilege and otherness. An activist, writer and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality in counselling and psychotherapy, Dr Turner can be contacted via his website www.dwightturnercounselling.co.uk.