Keynote Speakers
Manu Bazzano
Title: In Praise of Pandemonium – A polyphonic, contrapuntal perspective on the notion of the organism in experiential psychotherapies and beyond
Dr Manu Bazzano is a writer, psychotherapist/supervisor in private practice, and independent researcher. Among his books: Subversion and Desire: Pathways to Transindividuation (2023)
Read more: manubazzano.com
Siebrecht Vanhooren
Title: Chaos, Growth, and Existential Empathy
Siebrecht Vanhooren (PhD) is professor of clinical psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. He teaches counseling, psychological interventions, and person-centered, experiential, and existential psychotherapy at undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level. He is the director of the person-centered therapy training programs and the existential well-being counseling program at KU Leuven. He also supervises the person-centered and focusing team at PraxisP (KU Leuven). He is the co-director KU Leuven’s Meaning & Existence research center and a committee member of The Eugene T. Gendlin Center for Research in Experiential Philosophy and Psychology (The Focusing Institute). His research includes topics such as existential concerns, meaning in life, posttraumatic growth, experiential-existential interventions, focusing, and existential empathy. Last but not least, he enjoys being alive, spending time with his family and friends, and tries to get a good sound out of his saxophone.
Maria Malikiosi-Loizos
Title: Can we be congruent both with the outer and inner voices?
Maria Malikiosi-Loizos is Professor Emeritus of Counselling Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. She studied Psychology (M.A. 1974, Ed.D. 1978) in the USA, where she also worked as a research and teaching assistant.
She has worked as a Researcher at the National Center of Social Research in Athens, Greece; as a post-doctoral intern at the Laboratory of Social Psychology of the National Centre of Scientific Research, (C.N.R.S.) Université Paris VII; and at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, France.
She founded, directed, and supervised the Peer Counseling Center of the University of Athens, Greece for twenty years, where she also trained peer counsellors. She initiated the first post graduate program in counseling and counseling psychology in Greece. She has taught counselling psychology courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in Greece, the US and several European countries. She has been invited as a lecturer in seminars and congresses in Greece and abroad. She has authored and co-authored several books, edited and also participated in publications in Greece and abroad with research articles for journals and book chapters.
She is and has been member of several scientific societies, in Europe and the United States including the APA and Division 17 of counselling psychology
She has been granted the award of outstanding contribution to European counselling psychology (the European Association for Counselling); an honorary award for her contribution to the development of counselling psychology in Greece (the Hellenic Psychological Society); the honorary membership of the Hellenic Association for Person Centered and Experiential Approach (hapcea); and also, the honorary memebership of the Hellenic Association for Counselling.
Jo Hilton
Title: How can our awareness of polyphony support the way we construct meaning?
Jo Hilton has pursued a lifelong interest in learning and facilitation of learning. She has worked in this field for more than 40 years, initially within theatre and the performing arts before moving into the field of counselling and psychotherapy, latterly as a clinical fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Inspired by the work of Paulo Freire and Carl Rogers, she has worked to facilitate dialogue with many counsellors-in-training from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia. She has hugely appreciated the different cultural experiences and personal developmental processes that she has witnessed in students and in her client work. She recently retired from the University of Edinburgh but her research interests in person-centred and psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy continue.
