On Wednesday 26 February Eleni Misganaw (University of Addis Ababa) will give a Metrodora Lunch Talk entitled "The power of lived experience in research: experience of the Ethiopian Mental Health Service Users Association". 

There are different ways that we can hold each other. There are also various ways that we can learn to learn about each other. We create theories, daily, simply by getting up every morning (when we have the energy to), brushing our teeth, showering and proceed with a way to approach our day. This daily creation of theories, is often not valued. There is a hierarchy to how we create theories and which theories are valued and which are not. Especially in institutions, academia and other settings whose foundations are deeply soaked in colonial bureaucracies and ways of engaging with the world. The work of Eleni Misganaw and the Mental Health Service Users Association (MHSUA), counters this hierarchy by working on mental health solutions which are bottom up, instead of top down. Solutions that provide alternatives to how those of us who are dealing with different levels of mental health unwellness. Solutions with a greater sense of agency through the validation of the knowledge that users of different mental health services have acquired through their many years of lived experience dealing with an array of unwellness. 

In this lunch talk organized by the Metrodora group, in collaboration with St Lucas College of the Arts Antwerp, Eleni will provide us with insights on the work MHSUA have been doing for nearly five years to create spaces for peer-to-peer engagement with Ethiopians living with different gradations of mental unwellness. In addition, Eleni will take us through the research that they have been doing in collaboration with Dr. Charlotte Hanlon at the University of Addis Ababa and University of Edinburgh Department of Psychiatry. Following the talk, Sumaya El Houbba, a Belgian-Moroccan trauma-informed health and social psychologist, and embodiment practitioner will provide us a response to the presentation which will also attempt to root the talk into the local context. Sumaya has many years of working with newcomers in Belgium, marginalized and various diaspora communities in Belgium. The event will be woven together by the spirited hosting of Latifah Abdou. 

WHAT: lecture and round table

WHO: Eleni Misganaw (University of Addis Ababa) and Sumaya El Houbba (respondent). Hosted by Latifah Abdou

WHERE: Annexe, next to the R-building 

WHEN: 26/02 11am-2pm lunch included

REGISTRATION for free but required (indicate dietary constraints): Katrien.Schaubroeck@uantwerpen

This talk is organised by Metrodora, KdG and the Faculty of Arts as part of Black History Month