Date: Friday 13 February 2026
Time: 17.30 to 19.30
Location: Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin.
Admission is free. Please click here to reserve a ticket.
The Creative Healing for Refugee Youth Book Launch and Voices from Practice and Lived Experience event, organised by the Centre for Forced Migration.
Join us for the launch of Psychological Support for Refugee Adolescents: An Expressive Arts Approach to Wellbeing and Trauma Recovery (Routledge), an exploration of how creativity can support healing and resilience for young people who have experienced displacement and trauma.
This special evening brings together voices from research, practice, and lived experience to illuminate the transformative power of expressive arts. We begin with opening remarks from the Provost and Vice-Provost for Global Engagement, before Dr Rachel Hoare introduces her new book, drawing on nearly a decade of clinical work with unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents and her research through Trinity's Centre for Forced Migration Studies.
We'll hear from Thomas Dunning, Principal Social Worker with Tusla's Separated Children's Unit, on the realities of supporting unaccompanied refugee minors in Ireland. Somaia Abunada and Abdallah Abusamra will share their powerful personal stories of using writing, embroidery, and the arts as tools for expression and connection in conflict and post-conflict settings.
Keynote speaker Thahmina Begum, an artist, researcher and therapist from the UK, will explore how art enables refugee youth to reclaim and reshape their narratives—turning fragments of experience into coherent, meaningful forms.
Whether you're a practitioner, researcher, student, or simply interested in creative approaches to wellbeing and social justice, this event offers rare insights into how the arts create pathways to healing for young people navigating forced displacement.
Light refreshments will be served from 5.30pm.
For further information please email Dr Rachel Hoare at rmhoare@tcd.ie