MA Trauma Informed Practice staff

Professor Gary Winship

Gary is the course leader MA Trauma Informed Practice, and chair of the School of Education Ethics Committee. He is the editor of the British Journal of Psychotherapy and consulting editor of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. He is a member of the executive steering group and education lead for the Institute of Mental Health (IMH). MHN (NMC). He is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist (UKCP). He is the research lead for the Universities Psychotherapy and Counselling Association (UPCA). He has worked in the NHS for 30 years (acute and community services with people with severe and complex traumas) and latterly as a consultant psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital and HMP Dovegate. He has published 130+ papers and chapters and six books and delivered 50+ keynote addresses in eight different countries. He is part of research grant captures of £2.8m with more than £300,000 as project lead. He is formerly a visiting professor at the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis and Russian State University for Humanities (RSUH). 

Dr Edward Sellman

Edward originally trained as a teacher, specialising in supporting students with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties with a focus on restorative approaches to conflict. His research and teaching interests have since evolved and Edward has written extensively about mindfulness and education, well-being and the relationship between the individual and institutional/sociopolitical contexts. He brings to the MA Trauma Informed Practice more recent training in transpersonal therapies. Edward is a tutor in Grofian Psychedelic Psychotherapy and works as a holotropic breathwork facilitator. He is also a trained facilitator in Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®) and volunteers as an integrative transpersonal counsellor at a hospice for clients who are bereaved or suffering from a life-limiting illness.

Dr Katy Wakelin

Katy is an Associate Professor of counselling in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham and UKCP-registered psychotherapist and supervisor. She teaches about counselling in education and difference and diversity and learning on the BA and MA in Education. Her research interests include how to assess the effectiveness of therapy, authenticity in the clinical process, the dynamics of health, power and shame and shame in higher education settings. Her original training was in Gestalt psychotherapy and she is currently undertaking a foundation training in group psychoanalysis. 

Professor Steven Regel

Steve is a trauma therapist and trainer specialising in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), with four decades of experience working with survivors of trauma both in the NHS and a range of other organisations. He founded the Centre for Trauma, Resilience & Growth (CTRG) in 1998 which was formally opened by Sir Terry Waite in 2000. Between 2000-2023, the CTRG was a collaboration between the NHS and Nottingham University and provided a service for a wide range of trauma survivors, including veterans, workplace trauma (mainly emergency service and related personnel), victims of torture and traumatic loss. The CTRG continues within the School of Education, University of Nottingham. Steve developed the first academic trauma studies programme in the UK, and was commissioned and taught to Health and Social Care Services in Northern Ireland for 6 years. He has regularly worked in Northern Ireland since 1992 and is a visiting therapist in the Family Trauma Centre in Belfast H&SS Trust. Steve trains Critical Incident Stress Management(CISM) and peer support both nationally and internationally. Since 1996, he has worked with the International Federation of the Red Cross Reference Centre for Psychosocial Support, facilitating training and assessments in Sri Lanka, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Scandinavia, Somaliland, Uganda, Kenya, and Georgia following the conflict with Russia in 2008. Steve provides training in Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) and interventions for traumatic loss. He is a trustee/mental health adviser with Hostage International and on the training committee for Children and War, UK. He retired from NHS in 2022 after 50 years of service.

Donna Stenton-Groves

Donna is an Honary Assistant Professor in the School of Education. She is an integrative psychotherapist with 20 years clinical experience within the NHS and Children’s Social Care and is also trained in trauma focused CBT and EMDR. Donna provided trauma treatment within the Centre for Trauma, Resilience and Growth. She designed and delivered in-depth training on trauma and trauma informed practice across children’s social work, children in care and leaving care teams, youth justice service, legal, human resources, and parenting teams. Donna has experience of running trauma consultation clinics for social workers, offering a reflective space to think about trauma within families. In 2021 Donna was appointed as a trauma consultant for Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Violence Reduction Unit.  Within this role she developed a Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire cross organisational strategy for trauma informed care. The strategy developed a shared understanding, language and trauma informed framework across social care, health, police, fire and voluntary sectors. Donna attended strategic boards (VRU, children and adult safeguarding boards, health boards) exploring with senior leadership the benefits and challenges of starting and embedding the journey of becoming trauma informed. Additionally, she ran cross organisational collaborative workshops and work with trauma survivor groups to ensure they could co-collaborate on the strategy. Donna chaired the Trauma Informed Cross Organisational Practice and Implementation Group until 2023. Donna’s current work involves her role as a visiting trauma informed consultant for the Mental Health Foundation, recently having completed a pilot programme introducing trauma informed care within refugee settlement hotels across a London borough. Donna offers clinical supervision and consultancy for workers in domestic and sexual violence services.  She is working as part of a team providing trauma treatment to families within the independent maternity review and providing trauma treatment for families within the Nottingham Response Service who have been bereaved within the context of murder.

Dr Stefan Rennick-Egglestone

Stefan is a mental health researcher working in the Institute of Mental Health. Much of his recent research has focused on understanding the forms of narrative that people share about their mental health experiences, and on sensitively working with people’s narratives to provide benefit to others. This has included the publication of findings from recent clinical trials of narrative interventions, including in the journals World Psychiatry  and Lancet eClinicalMedicine.

Stefan has personal experience of childhood trauma. This informs his work as a mental health researcher, and his participation as an educator in the MA Trauma Informed Practice. As a researcher, Stefan works to maintain proficiency and expertise in a range of forms of research reviewing, and has regularly published systematic and conceptual reviews. These include reviews published in the journals PLoS One and the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

Professor Rex Haigh

NHS consultant psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy since 19994, Group Analyst, and Honorary Professor in the School of Education, Rex is passionate about promoting relational practice that is values-based and grounded in compassionate care. In 2023 he launched a new Relational Network Movement at the Royal College of Psychiatrists with the opening keynotes delivered by Lord Alderdyce and Dame Claire Gerada. Rex has worked with the Department of Health as Clinical Advisor for the National Personality Disorder Programme (2002-2011). Rex has been Chair of the Association of Therapeutic Communities, series editor of the Jessica Kingsley ‘Community, Culture and Change’ book series, and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. He started the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ “Community of Communities” in 2002 and “Enabling Environments” in 2009. His clinical interests are modified therapeutic communities, ecotherapy, critical psychiatry, and co-creation with service users. The social enterprise he chairs, ‘Growing Better Lives’ won the 2014 sustainability award from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He was appointed as Honorary Professor of Therapeutic Environments and Relational Health at Nottingham University’s School of Sociology and Social Policy in 2015.

Rex supervises PhD students in the School of Education, and teaches sessions on the MA Trauma Informed Practice looking at relational practice, and group and community based work with people who have experienced complex trauma.

Dr Shelley MacDonald

Shelley has Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy & Research. She is also a Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy & Research. She is also a qualified EMDR practitioner. 30+ years working across all age groups, and over the last decade working with children in primary schools, where she leads four school based services and a team of therapists. She teaches on the MA Trauma Informed Practice and supervises dissertation research. Her areas of expertise are early trauma, safeguarding, approaches to supervision. Her research interests are in the area of the arts and psychotherapy (a mental health tool kit for artists in conjunction with BACKLIT gallery in Nottingham).  She also is researching, autistic states, pre-natal and birth trauma.  Her doctoral research looked at suicide-communication in primary school children. She has worked in psychotherapy services in the NHS, residential care services, secondary and primary schools and university counselling services, and in private practice.