Conference Speakers
Keynote Speaker
Sat 11:00 – Beneath the Armour: Pressure, Identity and Release
Beneath the Armour: Pressure, Identity and Release explores the diversity of masculinity, the often-unseen pressures men face, and the strength and potential that can emerge when those pressures are acknowledged and released. Drawing on her work as a certified psychological therapist, poet, author and mental health advocate, Anne blends creative expression with psychological theory to support individuals and communities. With a specialist focus on empowering melanated men and navigating pathways to personal and collective transformation, her practice is informed by collaboration with men whose lived experiences of systemic adversity and societal expectations are reshaping how we understand modern masculinity today.
Keynote Speaker
Sat 12:15 – Rainbow Warriors: A Journey Through Pride, Shame, and Queer Becoming
This keynote invites psychotherapists to consider fashion and dressing as clinically significant modalities and vital sites for reworking masculinity, shame, and relational capacity. Drawing on personal narratives of growing up gay in Bangkok and later navigating London’s gay and queer scenes, it traces ongoing negotiations between pride and shame shaped by family trauma, migration, and the enduring desire to belong. It argues how fashion, drag, and the art of dressing operate as embodied, creative interventions which support identity integration and offer protection against both externalised and internalised homophobia. Framed as strategies of survival and liberation enacted through play and self-expression, these practices have evolved into pedagogical and therapeutic frameworks that inform my teaching at the University of the Arts London and community-based work in male prison settings. They illuminate pathways to healing through visibility, pride, and transformation.
Keynote Speaker
Sun 09:45 – From Silence to Sovereignty: Emotional Liberation for Men from the Global Majority
This keynote examines modern masculinity through a culturally grounded Humanistic lens, exploring how racism, bias, intergenerational trauma, and “the white gaze” shape the emotional lives of men from the global majority, and perhaps most importantly, how therapists can better support them. Drawing on lived experience, clinical practice, psychological theory, developments in neuroscience, ancient wisdom, and spiritual truths that remain relevant across generations, the talk invites curiosity about what epigenetics and our deeper ancestral inheritance can teach us. It also acknowledges the value of concepts such as the Akashic field in illuminating unspoken emotional legacies and explanations beyond traditional psychotherapeutic theory. The session includes preparation and reflective space to honour the soul-exhaustion many carry into the room.
Keynote Speaker
Sun 11:00 – Deconstructing The Symbolic Black Phallus
European racial science, medicine, and psychoanalysis have historically depicted Black masculinity through hypersexualisation and perceived threat to white masculinity, thus transforming Black men into symbols of “animalism” and uncontrolled desire. These disciplines served as essential tools for organised violence and colonial dominance, creating narratives that portrayed Black male bodies as simultaneously delinquent and inherently rapacious. This talk aims to foster discussion, not to judge anyone or what they enjoy. You may reflect and ask yourself questions, and that is perfectly fine. This is not an attack on anyone.