The program will feature keynote presentations and workshops from the following internationally and locally acclaimed speakers:

• Professor George Bonanno
• Professor Grace Christ
• Professor Robert Neimeyer
• Professor Mario Mikulincer
• Assoc. Professor Holly Prigerson
• Emeritus Professor Beverley Raphael AM
• Professor Margaret Stroebe

Professor George Bonanno Ph.D.

Columbia University, USA

Professor George Bonanno, received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research over the past 15 years has examined how adults and children respond to and cope with extremely aversive events, such as the death of a loved one, war, infectious disease, sexual abuse, and terrorist attack. In recent years, Professor Bonanno's work has focused more specifically on defining psychological resilience in adults exposed to extreme adversity and on the psychological and contextual factors that might inform resilient outcomes. This work has been funded by generous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Professor Grace Christ DSW

Director of the FDNY-CSU/Columbia University Family Program, USA

Dr. Christ is Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work in NYC and has clinical and research interests in the fields of psychosocial oncology, end-of-life, palliative care, and interventions in childhood bereavement and traumatic loss. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia she was the Director of Social Work at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.Among other publications, she is the author of Healing Children's Grief: Surviving a parent's death from cancer, published in 2000 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Christ recently directed the Social Work Leadership Development Awards Program of the Project on Death in America that promoted the creation of a network of social workers and supporting organizations in this specialty area and is currently Chair of the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Care Network.She is also Director of the FDNY-CSU/Columbia University Family Guidance Program for families in which a firefighter father was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and a co-author of the book FDNY Crisis Counselling: Innovative Responses to 9/11 Firefighters, Families and Communities.

Professor Mario Mikulincer

Professor of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel

Mario Mikulincer completed his university studies in Israel and received a PhD degree in psychology at Bar-Ilan University in 1985. His PhD dissertation presented a Coping Model of Human Learned Helplessness. From 1985, he published more than 240 articles and book chapters, two authored books (Human learned helplessness: A coping perspective, Plenum Press, 1994; Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change, Guilford Press, 2007), and one edited book (Dynamics of romantic love – attachment, caregiving, and sex, Guilford Press, 2006).

Professor Mikulincer's main research interests are: Attachment styles in adulthood; Terror Management theory; personality processes in interpersonal relationships; prosocial feelings and behavior; trauma and post-trauma, and grief-related processes. Since 1992, he has been a professor of psychology at Bar-Ilan University. Between 1995-1999, he acted as the Chair of the Psychology Department at Bar-Ilan University. Between 1999-2004, he acted as the Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies of Bar-Ilan University, and between 2004-2006, he served as the Dean of Bar-Ilan University's Regional Colleges. In October 2007, he became the Dean of the School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzlyia. He serves as a member of the editorial boards of the following journals: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: IRGP; Journal of Personality; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; Personality and Social Psychology Review; Psychological Inquiry. Since 2003, he has acted as an associate editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Since 2006, he has also acted as an associate editor of Personal Relationships. In 2004, he received the E.M.E.T. Prize (www.emetprize.org/eng/) in Social Science for his contribution to psychology. In 2006, he was awarded the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for Distinguished Mid-Career Achievement from the International Association for Relationship Research.

Professor Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D.

University of Memphis, USA

Robert A. Neimeyer is Professor and Director of Psychotherapy Research in the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, where he also maintains an active clinical practice. Since completing his doctoral training at the University of Nebraska in 1982, he has published 20 books, including Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss, and Lessons of Loss: A Guide to Coping, and serves as Editor of the journal Death Studies. The author of over 300 articles and book chapters, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process, both in his published work and through his frequent professional workshops for national and international audiences. Neimeyer served as a member of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on End-of-Life Issues, and Chair of the International Work Group for Death, Dying, & Bereavement. In recognition of his scholarly contributions, he has been granted the Eminent Faculty Award by the University of Memphis, made a Fellow of the Clinical Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, and given the Research Recognition Award by the Association for Death Education and Counseling.

Assoc. Professor Holly G. Prigerson, PhD

Dana Farber Cancer Institute, USA

Dr. Prigerson has studied psychosocial factors that influence the quality of life and care received by terminally ill patients and factors influencing caregiver adjustment both before and after the death of a loved one since her dissertation work at Stanford in the late 1980s. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Epidemiology of Aging at Yale University and then was funded by the NIMH for a K-award to study psychosocial factors in bereavement-related depression while an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh.

In 1997, she returned to Yale as Assistant Professor in Psychiatry where she received three NIH R01 grants to conduct a DSM field trial of consensus criteria for Complicated Grief, a psychiatric epidemiologic longitudinal prospective study of advanced cancer patients and the caregivers that survived them, and a study of psychosocial factors influencing ethnic disparities in end-of-life care and bereavement adjustment. During this time she was promoted to Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Dr. Prigerson then moved to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to assume leadership of the Center for Psychooncology and Palliative Care Research, with an academic appointment as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is now involved with a wide variety of research projects including intervention studies for Complicated Grief, a study to improve the cardiovascular health of recently bereaved cancer patient caregivers, and the factors influencing equanimity in the acknowledgement of terminal illness.

Emeritus Professor Beverley Raphael, AM, MBBS, MD, FRANZCP, FASSA,FRCPsych, Hon.MD (Ncle, NSW)

Professor of Population Mental Health and Disasters & Director, Centre for Scientific and Collaborative Investigation of Mental Health Adversities (SCIMHA), University of Western Sydney.

Professor Psychological Medicine, Australian National University.

Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry from the University of Queensland.

Prof. Raphael has been involved in the development of national mental health policy in Australia and is responsible for mental health policy and program development in New South Wales (NSW).

She has a long-term involvement and expertise in research and management in the area of trauma, grief and disasters, and more recently response to terrorism and its mental health correlates and consequences. She is an internationally recognised expert in mental health response and disasters. This has included planning for the Sydney Olympics and response to the Bali Bombing. She has lead the development of prevention and public health approaches to mental health and the implications of these for disasters and terrorism and has responsibility for coordinating national mental health responses to these events in Australia. She is chair of the National Working Party for Mental Health aspects for Terrorism and Disaster and is the current chair of the National Mental Health Disaster Taskforce which co-ordinated the National Mental Health response to the South East Asia Tsunami disaster. She is a consultant to WHO and other international groups.

She is the author of The Anatomy of Bereavement (1983), When Disaster Strikes (1986), co-editor of the International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Studies (1993), co-editor of the Handbook of Preventative Psychiatry (1995) and co-editor of Psychological Debriefing: Theory, practice and evidence (2000), as well as numerous scientific articles with reference to mental health aspects of terrorism and disasters and keynote and invited addresses.

Professor Margaret Stroebe

Utrecht University, Netherlands

Margaret Stroebe is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. She received her Ph.D from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, in cross-cultural and developmental psychology, for a research project on cognitive development among children in Malaysia. She also worked in Africa, teaching at high school and teacher training levels. She has taught and conducted research at universities in Germany and the United States as well as the UK and Netherlands.

Her major research interest is the study of reactions to interpersonal loss, particularly bereavement, focusing on theoretical approaches to grief and grieving, interactive patterns of coping, and the efficacy of bereavement intervention. Current research projects include two longitudinal investigations, one of couples coping with the death of their child and the other an Internet examination of the efficacy of written disclosure intervention among bereaved spouses. Current theoretical work involves attempts to integrate attachment with cognitive stress perspectives to increase predictive validity with respect to bereavement outcome, and to unravel the nature and impact of ruminative processes in coping with bereavement. With Henk Schut she developed the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement (published in Death Studies, 1999), a model which involves cognitive restructuring, emotion regulation and extension of the tasks of grieving, thereby providing a broader alternative to the grief work hypothesis.

She is coauthor (with Wolfgang Stroebe) of Bereavement and Health (1987) and Social Psychology and Health (1995) and editor (with Robert Hansson and Wolfgang Stroebe) of the Handbook of Bereavement: Theory, Research and Intervention (1993) and also, (with Robert Hansson, Wolfgang Stroebe and Henk Schut) of the Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping and Care, published in 2001 by the American Psychological Association Press. She has recently completed a new monograph with Robert Hansson for APA Press (2007), entitled Bereavement in Later Life: Coping, Attachment, and Developmental Influences and is currently completing the third edited handbook with Robert Hansson, Henk Schut and Wolfgang Stroebe: Handbook of Bereavement Research and Practice: 21st Century Perspectives (in press).

She is member of a number of editorial boards and international associations, including the Association of Death Education and Counseling (honorary life member), the Bereavement Research Forum, and the International Workgroup on Death, Dying and Bereavement. She recently received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and in 2002 she received the Scientific Research Award of the American Association of Death Education and Counseling.