InsightsScience communication
Insights
My approach is grounded in the belief that accessible knowledge can support informed decision-making, challenge assumptions about mental health and wellbeing and create more meaningful connections between research, practice and lived experience. Rather than simplifying academic findings, I aim to preserve nuance and curiosity while making complex ideas understandable and relevant. In doing so, science communication becomes a way of sharing knowledge responsibly, amplifying perspectives that are often overlooked and aim to contribute to more informed conversations.
Science communication is an extension of my clinical and research practice: making psychological, health and ethical knowledge accessible without losing the complexity, context or evidence that gives it meaning. I translate research into clear, engaging content for members of the public, practitioners, students, community organisations, policymakers, media and other non-specialist audiences. This includes communicating what research tells us about trauma, sexual violence, embodiment, spirituality, mental wellbeing and the social conditions that shape recovery.
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Research in plain language
Each piece reads one publication for people without a clinical or research background and links to the article itself.
Plain-language publication summary2025
How trauma is experienced beyond words
Explores how integrative silence can create space for embodied awareness, relational safety and trauma processing, offering an alternative to the expectation that survivors must rely on words to communicate and heal.
From the publication
‘Stay with the body’: facilitating integrative silence in community-based sexual trauma care. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1), 2025.Plain-language publication summary2026
When faith can both support and complicate healing
Explores how religion and spirituality can shape trauma recovery, revealing the complex ways faith may provide meaning, coping and support while also complicating survivors’ efforts to process and integrate traumatic experiences.
From the publication
‘I just want the pain to go away’: religious coping and sexual trauma recovery in South African, marginalised contexts. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 28(2), 275 to 287, 2026.Plain-language publication summary2025
Understanding wellbeing beyond the individual
Provides a detailed methodology and explores how community-centred, feminist and restorative approaches can support trauma recovery by strengthening connection, agency and embodied healing among survivors of childhood sexual trauma in marginalised communities.
From the publication
Healing Bodies, Healing Communities: A Community-Based Qualitative Study of Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Trauma in South Africa. Healthcare, 13(20), 2601, 2025.Plain-language publication summary2026
Rethinking how trauma care is provided
Develops a qualitative Integrative Trauma-Informed Care model for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, highlighting tailored, equitable trauma recovery that responds to individual needs and the realities of marginalised South African communities.
From the publication
A Qualitative Model for Integrative Trauma-Informed Care for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse in Marginalized South African Communities. Health Psychology Research, 14(1), e81240046, 2026.
Six themes
Ways into the work
Each theme gathers the plain-language pieces, the publications and the presentations that speak to it.
Embodied Trauma & Recovery
How trauma is experienced beyond words
Explore the ways trauma can be held and communicated through the body, emotions, silence and non-verbal expression. This theme can make embodied trauma recovery understandable to both clinicians and the public.
embodiment · somatic awareness · integrative silence · non-verbal communication · trauma recovery
Integrative Trauma-Informed Care (ITIC)
Rethinking how trauma care is provided
Communicate the development and application of your ITIC model and what it contributes to trauma-informed practice, particularly in under-resourced and marginalised contexts.
survivor agency · relational safety · therapeutic co-development · culturally responsive care · ethical practice
Sexual Trauma & Its Long-Term Impact
Understanding what happens when trauma remains unaddressed
Translate knowledge about childhood sexual abuse and sexual violence into accessible discussions about long-term psychological, embodied, relational and social effects, while highlighting pathways towards recovery.
childhood sexual abuse · disclosure · silence · intergenerational trauma · survivor agency · recovery
Spirituality, Religion & Trauma Recovery
When faith can both support and complicate healing
Explore the complex relationship between religion, spirituality and trauma recovery, including how spiritual beliefs and religious communities can provide meaning and support while, in some circumstances, also contributing to distress or inhibiting trauma integration.
religious coping · spirituality · meaning-making · spiritual complexity · institutionalised religion · spiritual safety
Decolonial Feminist & Restorative Approaches to Mental Health
Rethinking whose knowledge shapes psychological care
Communicate how feminist, decolonial and restorative perspectives challenge conventional assumptions about psychological distress, healing and knowledge production, while foregrounding power, gender, history, culture and social justice.
decolonial psychology · feminist praxis · restorative care · power · gender · epistemic justice
Mental Health & Community
Understanding wellbeing beyond the individual
Explore how psychological wellbeing and trauma recovery are shaped by social, historical, geographic and structural conditions. This theme creates an important bridge between individual clinical care and wider questions about inequality, community wellbeing and global mental health.
marginalised communities · structural violence · intergenerational trauma · community psychology · health inequity · social determinants of mental health
An invitation to dialogue
Read, respond, propose
I welcome dialogue with researchers, practitioners, organisations, students, community partners and others interested in mental health and responsive care. You are invited to engage with my work, suggest topics for future communication, explore opportunities for collaboration and connect around research, education, clinical practice and community engagement.
The publications behind these pieces, with abstracts and citations, are on the Research and Publications page.
Research and Publications