I am a researcher and practitioner in narrative mediation, exploring the transformation of conflicts through storytelling, autoethnography, and intercultural dynamics.
DR. SUSAN MOSSMAN RIVA
Creating dialogical space within social and healthcare networks, while promoting participatory practices has been the focus of my work. I began as a mediator on an accident site, performing mediation in an intercultural context. I then designed a mediation service, offering conflict resolution and health-care prevention services to political asylum seekers. My recent work doing needs assessment for public health reports has allowed me to integrate the perceptions of professionals into healthcare planning, informing decision-makers. As a consultant I facilitate conflicts and social transformation processes. My interdisciplinary research engenders social innovation.
Je suis chercheuse et praticienne en médiation narrative, explorant la transformation des conflits à travers les récits, l’autoethnographie et les dynamiques interculturelles.
MY CURRENT RESEARCH
Writing to Transform Relations
Here is a recent publication gathering autoethnographic contributions from a conference in Tarragona, Spain. My chapter, "Writing to Transform Relations", recounts my authoethnographic process while writing Homing In. Autoethnography is a social science method used in medical anthropology.
Autoethnography
Here is my conference presentation that explains how I use transformational pedagogies in my courses at Creighton University and the Valais College of Alternative Medicine. Narrative methods are used to elicit reflexivity and self- transformation as students engage in the auto/duo ethnographic process.
Transformational pedagogies
MY PAST RESEARCH
The Senior Living Lab
Hopeful healthy aging model
As a researcher within the Senior Living Lab, an interdisciplinary research project at the University of Applied Sciences and Art Western Switzerland, I produced a documentary film on hopeful healthy aging.
Perceptions of aging were gathered through filmed interviews using Senior Living Lab participant's testimonies of resilience.