Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Dance
DAVID ALAN HARRIS
An Evening with David Alan Harris: "Using Dance Movement Therapy to Heal African Survivors of War
Beyond the Classroom
1102 South Campus Commons, Building 1
Monday, October 12, 2009 . 7-9PM
http://www.beyondtheclassroom.umd.edu/btccalendar.php
David Alan Harris is a leading dance and movement therapist with clinical experience in mental health rehabilitative treatment who has worked with former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa and with young male survivors of severe trauma. Combining his careers in human rights advocacy and choreography to work on the ground in Sierra Leone's Kailahun District, David has collaborated with local counselors to develop an innovative dance and movement program to provide treatment for 12 former child soldiers, all of whom were orphans who survived the brutality of Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war. David's inspiring work has demonstrated that "dance and movement therapy (DMY) interventions, if designed to promote cultural relevance and community ownership, may enhance healing among adolescent survivors of war and organized violence."
PEACEWORK: Dancing to Heal
Preinkert Dance Studio
Tuesday October 13, Thursday October 15, and Friday October 16 . 4-6PM
To register for the workshop and to add an Independent Study in Dance Therapy to your schedule, please contact Karen Bradley in the Dance Dept. 301-405-0387 or kbradley@umd.edu. The workshop alone is not available for credit, but students must sign up to participate in the six hours. Credit is available to those willing to register for Independent Study in Dance, DANC 398 or 698; you must contact Karen Bradley in order to register for credit OR for the workshop alone.
Keynote Address, Atrocities, Resilience and Healing: Peace-Building Lessons from African Child Soldiers
Semester on Peace
Co-Sponsored by the Initiative on Education for Peace, Cooperation, and Development (IEPCD), Student Entertainment Events (SEE), the First-Year Book, the UMUC Marriott, and ARHU
Colony Ballroom, Adele Stamp Student Union
Wednesday, October 14 . 7-9PM
David Alan Harris will deliver the Keynote Address of the Semester on Peace about his work with Dance Movement Therapy in the treatment of child soldiers and other victims of torture and post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a campus-wide talk, featuring film on his work in Sierra Leone, and will serve as a prelude to Dave Egger's talk on his book, What is the What?, the First-Year Book. Read David Alan Harris's article on his work in Foreign Policy in Focus here.
Nature of Residency: David Alan Harris, Dance Therapist, who has worked directly with the former boy soldiers in Sierra Leone and former "Lost Boys" of the Sudan, will be on the University of Maryland campus this fall as a part of the Semester on Peace, from October 12-17.
Biographical information: David Alan Harris, MA, LCAT, BC-DMT, NCC, is a dance/movement therapist who specializes in fostering resilience and recovery among survivors of egregious human rights abuse, and war. As a Clinician/Trainer for the Center for Victims of Torture in rural Sierra Leone, he supervised a team of paraprofessional trauma counselors providing therapeutic services in the aftermath of that country's brutal conflict. He introduced Sierra Leonean and Liberian counselors to dance/movement therapy (DMT) practice - in 2005, launching the first DMT group in West Africa; and in 2006, apparently the first DMT group anywhere for former child combatants.
David has presented on his DMT work at various U.S. and international gatherings, including the IX International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims Symposium in Berlin, in 2006, four annual conferences of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), and at McGill's Division of Transcultural Psychiatry in Montreal. The ADTA honored one of David's academic articles about his dance therapy work with its 2007 Research Award, and recognized his efforts more broadly, bestowing on him its Leader of the Future award that year. A 2002 graduate of the Creative Arts in Therapy program at MCP Hahnemann (now Drexel) University, David has taught graduate-level courses on trauma treatment at Columbia College, Chicago, and Naropa University in Boulder.
David also has more than 15 years' experience working for organizations dedicated to sustainable solutions to the problems of refugees and asylum-seekers, including for Doctors of the World-USA, the American Friends Service Committee, and Human Rights Watch. In 2008, the U.S. Embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, sponsored a series of training workshops David and a colleague conducted there, designed to increase the effectiveness of health professionals and other civil society workers providing services to survivors of the country's ongoing political violence.
