Our Teaching Team
Rosa Arteaga, MA
Mexico/Canada
Christine Dennstedt, PhD
Canada
Helené Grau, MA
Denmark
Rosa has been working for that past 20-years as the Clinical Director and supervisor within a large multi-disciplinary team with a non-
profit anti-violence women’s organization. This experience has created the development of 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 demonstrates all her work through story-telling and unaltered transcripts. Rosa is a long time Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy faculty member who trains and supervises therapists world-wide in both Spanish and English.
Christine surfs, skis, boats, and mountain bikes (big time) and has been deeply engaged in the narrative therapy community of Vancouver, Canada since completing her Masters degree in 2002. She then trained, worked, published and innovated new forms of narrative group work for substance using street and sex trade youths that was fully steeped in narrative practices. In 2010 she completed her PhD, working closely with the TAOS Institutes renowned director Dr. Sheila MacNamee.
Christine's narrative therapy informed doctoral dissertation studied the interconnection between substance misuse and disordered eating in the lives of young women. Along with her private practice now in Whistler, Canada, her new narrative practice developments are in the field of psychedelic medicines and mental health - and their relationship with narrative practice.
Helené was a nationally ranked tennis player and is the co-founder of Narrativ Praxsis - The
Centre for Narrative Therapy in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is internationally recognized for turning
popular models of grief psychology completely upside down. Helené 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 death of a child.
Helené 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. She teaches, trains, keynotes, and supervises worldwide.
Stephen Madigan, PhD
Canada
David Marsten, MA
USA
Todd May, PhD
USA
Stephen is an award-winning couple therapist, Training Director of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy, content manager of VSNT.live, and supervisor to many international high couple conflict teams. He wrote the first doctoral dissertation on narrative therapy, and his work is studied in Graduate University programs across the world through various media forms including the American Psychological Associations production of six learning videos filmed by an Emmy award winning director and 8-member crew of his live narrative practice.
Stephen was a member of Canada's National Ultimate team in two world championships, wrote the APA’s best-selling 1st and 2nd Editions of the book Narrative Therapy, published in 2011 & 2019. The APA published the 3rd Edition in October 2025. View his private couple therapy site
at: https://www.stephenmadigan.ca
David is recognized internationally as one of the most highly creative narrative therapists in the world today. He is known in his home state of California as an innovative therapy legend who: Co-authored the global phenomenon entitled Narrative Therapy in Wonderland – a groundbreaking book on working with children, youth and families and - the guy who developed one of the first narrative therapy internship programs in Los Angeles. In 1998 David established the the narrative therapy Miracle Mile Community Practice with a mission to provide affordable counselling and advanced training in narrative therapy.
David is a long-time VSNT faculty member who presents his always new and developing narrative therapy practices with children, youth and families throughout the world. He teaches VSNT workshops through video tapes, and absolutely stunning live interviews.
You might recognize Todd as the philosopher advisor to the hit TV show The Good Place on NBC and/or philosophical consultant on the New York Times best-selling book entitled How to Be Perfect. He’s definitely all that, but to all of us he is our resident teaching philosopher and longtime faculty member with the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy.
Todd is the theoretical guide that affords VSNT faculty to continually change, grow and create new narrative practice. He challenges ideas, offers alternatives, and takes us on new lines of flight. He is the author of eighteen books of philosophy, including books on the French post-structuralists Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, and continues to be highly active in grassroots political movements in immigration rights and anti-racism
campaigns, and has taught people sentenced to life imprisonment and others coming off of years in solitary confinement. His most recent book Should We Go Extinct (2024) is written for the public.
David Rock Nylund, PhD
USA
“How many of us ask ourselves, not once and for all time, but frequently and at different times, how might one live? How many of us embrace that question, not only in our stories but in our actions, our projects, our commitments? How many of us open the door to the possibility that, however we are living, we might live otherwise?
~ From VSNT Faculty Todd May’s book, Gilles Deleuze: An introduction
Rock began his study and practice of narrative therapy in the early 1990's. He's tenured Professor of Social Work at California State University Sacramento and, Creator/Clinical Director/Supervisor of the State of California's award-winning Gender Health Centre who have managed to revolutionized therapeutic work with trans youth and families.
He supervises Graduate students and professional therapists across five continents, has a private practice, and is a longtime Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy faculty member.
Rock's doctoral degree is in Cultural Studies, he has published three highly acclaimed books on Narrative Therapy along with 55 articles on a wide range of narrative therapy theory/practice and cultural studies topics. He teaches ongoing narrative therapy workshops for mental health professionals worldwide.
"One of our primary responsibilities as narrative therapists … is to co-create and sustain a territory of therapeutic safety - a space where people can meaningfully explore new knowledges, re-member values they cherish, and begin to weave these new possibilities into the ongoing re-authoring of their lives"
~ Christine Dennstedt, VSNT Faculty
Associate Faculty
Todd Disney, PsyD
USA
Erling Fiddjestøl, MA
Norway
Julia Gerlitz, MA
Canada
Todd is a deeply committed Narrative Psychologist living in northern California who has worked in the mental health field in various family therapy settings and more recently, a private practice working with couples through a narrative therapy informed Relational Interviewing framework (NIRI).
Todd teaches and supervises students and new therapists and is a certified trainer tor the International Center for Clinical Excellence – through Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT). He is also a Board Member of the art activist group LifeonArt.org and views poetics as a powerful tool for personal activism through a concept of “Life as Lived Art".
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 resides in Nelson, BC who represents narrative's next generation of therapists and, much like Christine, she surfs, skis,
and mountain bikes (big time). She is deeply connected to a number of narrative therapy communities and has been practicing narrative since 2011. Julia holds an intense interest in developing new and creative therapeutic letter writing practices in the area of narrative informed
practices with complex trauma and abuse. These include inviting clients to write letters to other clients, using co-created narrative documents in place of group therapy, and the use of letters in supervision.
Julia has published several articles on these innovative frameworks of letter writing. Herself and Rock Nylund have recently landed a contract with Routledge publications to write a book on Polyamory Relationships.
Ottar Ness, PhD
Norway
“Narrative therapy found internal state psychology’s more formalized description of personhood championed the norm through generalizations regarding who people ‘actually are’, whereas the ideas supporting narrative therapy are based in relational encounters rendering the unexpected invisible and unique, so as not to be misled by the general.”
~ Stephen Madigan - VSNT Faculty
Ottar is a Professor of Counselling at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and is the Head of NTNU WellFare: Nordic Research Center for Wellbeing and Social Sustainability and Editor and Chief of the Nordic Journal of Wellbeing and Sustainable Welfare Development. His research explores how conditions of fairness and experiences of mattering — relate to well being ill-being, mental health and health outcomes, and how these relational contexts shape individuals’ lives and society at personal, relational, collective, and structural levels. Ottars work has been taken up by the World Health Organization (WHO) as it bridges theory and practice by designing research, interventions, and policy that foster mattering, well-being fairness, and well-being economies.
