Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter is a criminologist at the University of New South Wales, where he studies the criminological aspects of complex trauma, including the intersections of technology with abuse, violence and exploitation.

He is the author of two books, Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013) and Crime, Justice and Social Media (Routledge, 2017), and a range of papers on child abuse, gendered violence and technology.

He conducts multi-method research with victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation, domestic violence and sexual assault and conducts multi-sectorial policy analysis with the aim of improving responses to survivors and preventing violence and abuse.

He sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and he is an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner, White Ribbon Australia and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

He is an associate editor of Child Abuse Review and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.

Our guest this week was Richard Schwartz, PhD, who developed the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of treatment for trauma and other therapeutic issues:

Richard Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.

A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS. You can read more about him and about IFS on his website HERE.