Anthropology’s Need for Trauma-Informed Approaches: Recognising the Prevalence of Trauma, Navigating its Impacts, and Considerations for Teaching.

Abstract

Traumatic experiences are prevalent across all cultures and all Higher Education contexts will almost certainly have survivors of trauma in the classroom as students or teachers. Focusing on the UK Higher Education context, this article draws on data indicating the rates of traumatic experiences among UK University populations in order to demonstrate the need for a trauma-informed approach to teaching anthropology. It goes on to show the ways in which anthropologists have worked with trauma and those who have experienced trauma in order to develop an anthropological interpretation of trauma-informed practices. Trauma-informed approaches centre the needs of survivors in the provision of services. Through reflecting on techniques for teaching a session on ‘child sexual abuse and trauma,’ I consider practical solutions for teaching challenging topics in ways that diminish possibilities of retraumatisation and vicarious traumatisation.