Gerrit Loots, Ph.D.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Brussel
Belgium
Phone: + 32 2 6292459
Email:gerrit.loots@vub.ac.be
Web:http://www.vub.ac.be/KLEP/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60
Gerrit Loots is professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational
Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and visiting professor at the
Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias del Compartamiento (IICC),
Departamento de Psicología of the Universidad Católica Boliviana “San
Pablo” at La Paz. He is the head of the VUB research group
Interpersonal, Discursive and Narrative Studies (IDNS) The focus of this
research group is on the study of psychological and educational
phenomena from an interpersonal and socio-cultural perspective. The
central research theme is the intersubjective construction and
reconstruction of the self/subject within his/her interpersonal
interaction processes. Those interpersonal or discursive processes are
studied and investigated as sites for generating joint meaning that
shapes the participants’ subjectivity, as well as expressions of the
historical and socio-cultural discourses, within which participants are
positioning themselves. The main fields of research, within which this
central theme of the social construction of the self/subject is applied,
are: (1) early parent-infant interaction and parenting; (2)
psychosocial wellbeing of children and adolescents involved in
situations of war, migration, poverty and social exclusion; (3)
Counseling and psychotherapeutic process research, mostly in postmodern
family therapy.
Since 2009, he also is co-director of the interuniversity Centre for
Children in Vulnerable situations (CCVS). This is a research cooperation
among the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (research group Interpersonal,
Discursive and Narrative Studies – IDNS-PE), Ghent University
(Department of Orthopedagogics) and the University of Leuven (research
group Education, Culture, and Society). The main goal of CCVS is to
conduct practice-based, participatory action and collaborative research
to enhance the psychosocial wellbeing of children and adolescents, who
live in vulnerable situations due to war (child soldiers, war-affected
children, refugee children) and/or social-economical risk factors
(poverty, migration and social exclusion). Currently, CCVS conducts
research in different countries, such as Bolivia, Colombia, Congo,
Palestine, Uganda and Uruguay.
Finally, Gerrit Loots has been practicing systemic therapy since the
80’s in different counseling and therapeutic settings. At the moment, he
is working from a narrative/collaborative perspective in the
psychotherapeutic centre in Belgium, and he also is a guest trainer at
different training institutes in family therapy.
Publications:
- Forced conscription of children during armed conflict: Experiences of former child soldiers in northern Uganda.
- Psychosocial Care of Former Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda: A Critical Review.
- Psychosocial Support of Girl Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda: Their Rehabilitation and Reintegration Process.
- Back Home? Social Integration and Coping with Trauma in Former Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda.
- More articles: www.vub.ac.be/infovoor/onderzoekers/research/person_pub.php?person_id=22946