Healing Collective Trauma: Navigating Shared Histories and Pathways to Restoration

Symposium: March 31 and April 1, 2025

Venue: UAB Hill Student Center Ballrooms A-D | 1400 University Blvd, Birmingham, AL 35294

This symposium seeks to explore the deep and lasting impacts of collective trauma across diverse communities and histories. The two-day event will bring together scholars, practitioners, and community advocates to engage in meaningful dialogue about the ongoing legacies of trauma rooted in racial injustice, genocide, systemic discrimination, and cultural erasure. By focusing on specific historical and contemporary contexts—such as racial trauma, the intergenerational impact of the Holocaust on Jewish identity, the profound cultural and spiritual wounds suffered by Native American tribes, and the often-overlooked trauma experienced by people with disabilities—the symposium aims to foster a deeper understanding of how trauma manifests, persists, and can be collectively addressed.

Through an interdisciplinary lens, the symposium will delve into the various pathways for healing, drawing on both traditional and alternative methods. Presentations will highlight community-based approaches that center storytelling, cultural reclamation, and ancestral practices, as well as innovative therapeutic techniques that integrate somatic practices, art, and ritual. Special emphasis will be placed on exploring non-Western healing modalities, trauma-informed care, and the importance of building inclusive, accessible spaces that honor diverse experiences and narratives.

Participants will engage in workshops, panel discussions, and interactive sessions designed to create a collaborative environment for sharing insights and strategies for collective healing. The symposium aims to challenge dominant paradigms by addressing the ethical dimensions of trauma recovery, advocating for justice-oriented healing practices, and promoting a vision of solidarity and resilience that transcends individual and communal boundaries. By bringing together these varied perspectives, we seek to inspire actionable steps toward a more equitable and compassionate future for all communities impacted by collective trauma.

Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies Conference, showing IHR team with Keynote Speaker and environmental activist, Catherine Coleman Flowers and her friend; Source: Kala Bhattar

Global Health Symposium, showing IHR team with their two speakers, Dr. Jaime Huerta Peralta from Peru and Maggie Koshal Reiyia from Kenya

International Peace Conference 2023, showing members of the IHR team with Rev. Berenice King; Source: Kala Bhattar

The IHR organizational team and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum with Riva Hirsch, a Holocaust survivor and Josephine Bolling McCall, whose father was lynched in Alabama in 1947; Source: Institute for Human Rights