Founder & Convenor
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Deisy Amorin-Woods
PERU-AUSTRALIA
Deisy is a bilingual, Peruvian born and raised systemic and family psychotherapist, who migrated to Australia at the ripe age of 19. Despite having lived most of her life in Australia, she is deeply proud of her heritage, and her primal language, Spanish, soaked in her cultural roots.
Deisy’s training and experience spans over 25 years. Initially trained as an educator, and after completing social work and psychology studies, she then trained as a Family Therapist. She completed her Masters of Family Therapy at the University of Queensland and initiated her PhD studies at Notre Dame University.
Curious about clinical immersion in different contexts and with varied cultures, she conducted further training in different countries, including a postgraduate in couple and relationship therapy based in New Zealand and a six month immersive internship at the Accademia di Psicoterapia della Famiglia, Rome in 2011.
Deisy has a wealth of clinical experience working across government, non-government and private sectors. In the private sector Deisy established two centres (from the ground up) in WA, the initial one launched in 2008.
In the government and non-government sectors, she has worked in diverse fields of practice, including mental health, justice, drug and alcohol, bereavement and palliative care, brain injury, women’s issues, and sexual and reproductive health. She has worked extensively with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. She has held senior clinical roles and managed large allied-health teams.
Deisy is a trained and highly experienced clinical supervisor and provides clinical supervision and consultation services to individual practitioners and clinical teams. She also supports students through their psychotherapy placements delivering clinical supervision.
As a tertiary educator, Deisy has worked across 3 universities in Western Australia and one in the Eastern Estates. She is particularly passionate about working with International students and openly engages in discussions about the importance of culture in designing teaching and learning methodology and tools.
Deisy has served on various professional boards. She served as Chair of the Editorial Board Australian New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT). She is Editorial Advisor on the Journal for Multicultural Education and is current Editor of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy: Dialogues & Interviews.
Deisy has presented at national and international Conferences and is a published author, with single authored-papers and has collaborated works across disciplines, tertiary institutions and contexts. Her main area of interest is working across cultures. She focuses on decolonizing and de-stigmatizing approaches and highlights the importance of polyphonic cultural voices and staying attuned to multiple distinct voices co-existing within a society, rather than considering a single dominant mono-narrative.
Social justice, through innovation, collaboration, and the establishment of partnerships is at the core of Deisy’s work. While working in Gov and NGO’s she initiated steering committees and working parties and established consumer groups in the MH sector, justice system, women’s health, and in the work and treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, opening and strengthening conversations, enhancing awareness, with the goal of improving services and approaches for minority community groups.
Her ongoing approach working systemically, holistically and from a broader perspective, tied to her eagerness in doing more and better for our communities, includes the family therapy field where for many years now, she has established, and nurtured strong relationships with respected and like-minded international colleagues, with whom she maintains ongoing communication, engages in projects, collaborates with and eagerly meets yearly at international family therapy conferences for over 13 years.
Deisy was touched by the warm response she had when approaching dear systemic colleagues around the world during the challenges of the pandemic, which ended in a published joint international article sharing personal and professional experiences as we all navigated trough uncertain times. This later led to a robust special pandemic issue convened by Deisy for the ANZJFT Journal inviting national & international systemic practitioners with single paper contributions.
One of Deisy’s fondest experiences has been her initiative launching a new section to the ANZJFT Journal where she has held interviews and conversations with global & esteemed leaders in our field of systems thinking and family therapy. She acknowledges the potency of narratives contained iin our voice as a powerful medium and form of expression sharing raw expoeriences. With this in mind her focus with this section has been on cultural influences in the application and practice of family therapy in different contexts exploring the diverse and intricate kaleidoscope of our field. Outside our field, Deisy has held conversations with influential community members who have made a positive difference in our context, as well as capturing experiences of members in our community including international students and cross-cultural couples as they travel their journeys.
Deisy was delighted when invited to join the EFTA discussion group towards the establishment of a family therapy federation, the initial idea which emerged back in 2015.
Close to her heart is the annual end of year greeting where she invites dear international colleagues to share a collecttive message to our world towards PEACE & UNITY.
Deisy’s passion, the cultivation of these solid relationships and rich discussions to more fittingly support our commuities, particularly our most disadvantaged-which aim at initiating sustainable, responsive and culturally respectful approaches to our world- is what led Deisy to found the INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMIC COLLECTIVE….
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