IAS Seminar: Ubuntu as Counter-Narrative

Full title: IAS Seminar: Ubuntu as Counter-Narrative: How Peer Dialogue Reshapes the Language of Mental Health in African Universities

IAS Residential Fellow Wangui Maina delivers a seminar on their research:

This seminar presents findings from an interdisciplinary investigation into how peer-led mental health interventions function as sites of discursive norm change among university students in Kenya. Drawing on discourse analysis of structured group sessions facilitated by trained student champions across 33 public universities, it examines how participants co-construct, and actively contest, the social meanings of distress, help-seeking, and wellbeing. Central to the analysis is the role of Ubuntu philosophy as a communicative resource: how a collective wellbeing framework operates not merely as cultural backdrop but as a practical discursive tool for displacing stigmatising, individualising mental health language. The seminar will share early analytical findings, invite critical dialogue on methodology, and explore implications for global mental health communication and peer intervention design.

Arrivals from 11.45am for a 12pm start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1pm.