Our Teaching Team
ROSA ARTEAGA, MA
MEXICO AND CANADA
Rosa is the Clinical Director and supervisor within a multi-disciplinary team with a non-profit anti-violence women’s organization, and long time Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy faculty member. She has developed a powerfully innovative narrative therapy informed social justice/feminist inspired therapeutic practice to support girls and women of all ages, and diverse backgrounds who are experiencing complex trauma and violence. Rosa guides participants far beyond popular ideas on trauma informed therapy by situating the complexities of gender violence and trauma within cultural, racial and gender politics. She has also created novel ways to interview the body and demonstrates all her work through session videos, story-telling and unaltered transcripts. Rosa trains and supervises world wide in both Spanish and English.
CHRISTINE DENNSTEDT, PHD CANADA
Christine has been deeply engaged in the narrative therapy community of Vancouver, Canada since completing her Master's degree in 2002. For the first ten years post-Masters she trained, worked, published and innovated new forms of narrative group work at a local substance use program for street and sex trade youths that was fully steeped in narrative practices. By 2010 she had completed her PhD, working closely with the TAOS Institutes world renown director Dr. Sheila MacNamee. Christine's narrative therapy informed Doctoral dissertation articulated the interconnection between substance misuse and disordered eating in the lives of young women. Along with her private practice now in Whistler, Canada, Christine is involved in new practice developments in the field of psychedelic medicines and mental health - and their relationship with narrative practice. In 2021 she was accepted into the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
HELENE GRAU, MA
DENMARK
Helene is co-founder of Narrativ Praxsis the Centre for Narrative Therapy in Denmark. She is a long time faculty member with the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy, frequent guest on VSNT.live, teaches narrative therapy at the University of Copenhagen, and rigorously studied alongside Michael White for many years. Helene is known for her elegant and awe inspiring narrative practice working with persons in relationship to grief, death and loss. Her narrative therapy inspired relational couple and family therapy practice specializes in work with parent relationships who have experienced the loss of a child. She teaches, trains and supervises world wide.
STEPHEN MADIGAN, PHD
CANADA
Stephen is an award winning narrative therapist, best selling therapy author, Training Director of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy, content manager of VSNT.live, and long time supervisor to Norway’s High Couple Conflict Teams. He wrote the first ever doctoral dissertation on narrative therapy and his therapy work is studied in Graduate University programs across the world through various media forms such as the American Psychological Associations production of a set of six professional learning videos filming his live narrative practice. He wrote the best selling 1st and 2nd Editions of the book Narrative Therapy, published in 2011 & 2019. The 3rd Edition will be published in July 2024. Stephen teaches, trains, consults and supervises globally.
DAVID MARSTEN, MA
USA
Veteran Los Angeles based narrative therapist and long time VSNT faculty member David Marsten is the co-author of the fabulous book on working with children, youth and families entitled Narrative Therapy in Wonderland. David developed one of the first narrative therapy internship programs in the Los Angeles area and in 1998 and established Miracle Mile Community Practice with a mission to provide affordable counselling and advanced training in narrative therapy. He has presented his ground breaking Wonderfulness Narrative Therapy practice with children, youth and families in India, Turkey, Spain, Norway, USA and Canada. David teaches workshops through theoretical discussion, live video taped sessions, and unaltered transcripts.
TODD MAY, PHD
USA
Todd is the resident teaching philosopher and faculty member with the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. He was a Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University up until 2021, and for many years taught people sentenced to life imprisonment and others coming off of years in solitary confinement. Todd is the author of seventeen books of philosophy, including Michel Foucault (2006) and Gilles Deleuze (2005). He continues to be highly active in grassroots political movements in immigration rights and anti-racism campaigns. Todd was also the philosopher advisor to the hit TV show The Good Place on NBC and philosophical consultant on the NYTimes best selling book book entitled How to Be Perfect. In 2022 he published a beautiful book on the Philosophy of Care.
AARON MUNRO, MA
CANADA
Aaron is Queer and Trans identified and for more than 18 years has worked as an advocate, activist and Agency director for the rights and dignity of unhoused people in Vancouver. Aaron's experience has led him to many ‘mental health firsts’ in Canada – including opening the first trans youth homeless housing project in 2017, and in 2021, he designed and opened the first homeless trans adult housing project staffed entirely by trans identified people. He holds a Masters degree in Narrative Therapy from the University of Melbourne, Australia and is a long time VSNT faculty member. He has also produced several video documentaries on issues of stigma, mental health and the homeless, and is the creator of a learning website for Peer support, social work, and community workers.
DAVID ROCK NYLUND, PhD
USA
Rock began practicing narrative therapy in 1990. He is a Professor of Social Work at California State University Sacramento, Clinical Director/Supervisor of the award winning Gender Health Centre, and longtime Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy faculty member. He has written three books on Narrative Therapy: Narrative Therapies with Children and Adolescents (1997); Treating Huckleberry Finn: A New Narrative Approach to Working with Kids Diagnosed ADD/ADHD (2000); and Therapeutic Conversations with Queer Youth: Transcending Homonormativity and Constructing Preferred Identities (2013) along with publishing 55 articles on a wide range of narrative therapy theory and practice topics. He conducts ongoing narrative therapy workshops and supervision for mental health professionals worldwide.
Associate Faculty
ERLING FIDJESTTØL, MA
NORWAY
Erling is recognized around the world as a leader in narrative theory and practice understandings in Norway. He is a clinical director and family therapist at the ROBUST child and family therapy Clinic in Oslo ~ Norways only all narrative therapy clinic. For the last 18 years Erling has immersed himself entirely in the study and practice of narrative therapy. He teaches narrative therapy to Family Therapy Graduate students and works with children, youth and their families suffering with a wide range of difficulties including high conflicts, and social, cultural and mental health issues of various kinds.
JULIA GERLITZ, MA
CANADA
Julia represents narrative's next generation of therapists. She is deeply connected to both the Vancouver and San Diego narrative therapy communities, through VSNT and NISD, and has been practicing narrative since 2011. Julia holds an intense interest in developing new and creative therapeutic letter writing practices that include inviting clients to write letters to clients, using co-created narrative documents in place of group therapy, and the use of letters in supervision. Juliahas published several articles on these innovative frameworks of letter writing and has currently recruited Rock Nylund onto her developing and publishing new ideas and therapeutic letter writing practices team.
SHARON LEUNG, PHD
HONG KONG/ UK
Sharon teaches, practices and supervises narrative therapy in Chinese/Cantonese and English. She first became an elite student of Michael White's in 2001. Over the two decades since Sharon (alongside Dr Angela Tsun) was the narrative therapy teaching and training leader in Hong Kong. Up until August 2020, she taught Social Work at Hong Kong Baptist University and was the Director of the Centre for Youth Research and Practice (CYRP). At CYRP, she organized and taught the One-year intensive narrative therapy training programme, supervised graduate students, and ran numerous collaborative projects with service users, practitioners and NGOs in Hong Kong. These projects aimed at indigenizing narrative practice in local communities and included collective narrative practice with young people struggling with drug use and isolation, male prisoners experiencing the harsh conditions of in correctional institutions, and parents of children with special educational needs.
JEFF ZIMMERMAN, PHD
USA
Jeff Zimmerman is at the top of the list of veteran narrative therapist/teachers world wide. Jeff first began his apprenticeship with Michael White in 1988 where he became Michael’s closest friend in North America. Jeff has over 15,000 + hours of in session narrative therapy experience, and is the co-author of a tremendously astute and helpful book entitled ‘If Problems Talked’ ~ a wonderful primer of old school narrative therapy! His latest book ‘Neuro-Narrative Therapy – new possibilities for emotion-filled conversations’ is considered a must read book that was written well ahead of its time.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
"I loved all the information and getting it from such high quality professionals. It was amazing to be able to see them all in action. The live demonstrations were probably my favourite part, as well as all of the discussion."