Dr Taiwo Afuape
Being a Nigerian British-born, working-class, Afrocentric, feminist and socialist woman is central to Taiwo Afuape’s current work as Director of the Institute of Family Therapy and Systemic Social Action (IFT), and as Community Psychology and Trauma-Informed Care Lead at North East London NHS Foundation Trust.
Taiwo is an experienced Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Family Therapist with training in Narrative Therapy and more than twenty-four years of post-qualification experience. Her previous roles have included establishing community psychology services for transitional populations, including women escaping domestic violence, sex workers, homeless people, people misusing substances, Roma and Irish travelling communities, and refugees. She has also worked for a human rights charity supporting survivors of torture; managed adult mental health systemic services in East and South West London; and held senior clinical and systemic family therapy roles in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in North and East London.
Afuape, T. (2004). Challenge to Obscuring Difference: Being a black woman psychologist using self in therapy. Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, 4(3), 164-176.
Afuape, T. (2006). Subjugating Nature and ‘The Other’: Deconstructing dominant themes in Minority world culture and their implications for Western psychology. Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, 6(4), 238-255.
Afuape, T. (2010). Community Education: progressive African/Caribbean masculinities as a challenge to domination. In: J. Guishard-Pine (ed.) Psychology, Race Equality and Working with Children. (pp.115-33). Trentham Books.
Afuape, T. (2011). Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma: to have our hearts broken. London: Routledge.
Afuape, T. & Hughes, G. (eds.) (2015) Liberation Practices: Towards Emotional Wellbeing Through Dialogue. London: Routledge.
Afuape, T. (2016). A ‘Fifth Wave’ Systemic Practice Punctuating Liberation – Reflective practice and collective social action. In: I. McCarthy & G. Simon (eds.), Systemic Therapy as Transformative Practice. Farnhill, UK: Everything is Connected Press.
Afuape, T. (2016). Beyond awareness of ‘difference’ and towards social action: ‘Solidarity practice’ alongside young people. ‘The difference that difference makes’ – special edition of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 21(3), 402-415.
Afuape, T. (2020). Radical systemic intervention that goes to the root: working alongside inner-city school children, linking trauma with oppression and consciousness with action. Journal of Family Therapy, 42(3), 425-452.
Afuape, T., Bodenstein, M. & Horn, J. (2022). Towards a Transformative, Feminist Approach to Trauma in Africa: Perspectives from Practice. African Institute for Integrated Responses to Violence Against Women and Girls & HIV and AIDS and Stephen Lewis Foundation.
Afuape, T. & Kerry Oldham, S. (2022). Beyond solidarity with Black Lives Matter: drawing on Liberation Psychology and Transformative Justice to address institutional and community violence in young Black lives. Journal of Family Therapy, 44(1), 20-43.
Afuape, T. (2022). The myth of Black father absenteeism—exploring attachment theory, gendered racism, and the “breakdown of family”. Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis, 16(2), 174–193.