Dainius Pūras
United Nations Human Rights Council

Prof. Dr. Dainius Pūras is appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

Dr. Puras is Professor and Head of the Centre for Child Psychiatry and Social Pediatrics at Vilnius University. He teaches at the Faculty of Medicine, Institute of International Relations and Political Science and at the Faculty of Philosophy of Vilnius University, Lithuania.  He is also visiting Professor at University of Essex (UK) and a Distinguished Visitor with the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University (USA).  

He was the founder of the Lithuanian Society of Families with Children who have Intellectual Disabilities; first President of Lithuanian Psychiatric Association; Chairman of the board of two non-governmental organizations in Lithuania: the Global Initiative on Psychiatry, and the Human Rights Monitoring Institute.

He is author of over 60 scientific publications covering issues such as public health, mental health, public health policy, disabilities, and prevention of violence. Prof. Pūras works closely with different stakeholders for the translation of scientific evidence into effective policies and practices through the application of modern human rights and public health approaches.

Prof. Dr. Carla Willig
Professor of Psychology at City University of London

She has a long-standing interest in qualitative research methods and their usage in psychology. Ever since she chose to use a qualitative research method for her doctoral research in the late 1980s when such approaches were still very much at the fringes within the discipline of psychology, she has engaged with questions about the nature, status and legitimacy of knowledge claims. She has used a variety of qualitative research methods in her own research, including grounded theory methodology (for her doctoral research in the 1980s), discourse analysis (throughout the 1990s) and more recently phenomenological research methods (2000 onwards). She is currently conducting qualitative metasynthesis research into the experience of living with terminal cancer. She is also exploring dual focus methodology by combining Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis(FDA).

Her most recent books include 'Qualitative Interpretation and Analysis in Psychology' (2012, McGraw Hill)  ‘Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology’ (2013, 3^rd edition, McGraw Hill/Open University Press), and 'The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology' (2017, with Wendy Stainton Rogers, London: Sage). 

Prof. Dr. Hella von Unger
Professor of Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich

Hella von Unger is Professor of Sociology with a focus on qualitative methodologies at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. She is a leading expert on qualitative and participatory health research in Germany. Since the 1990s, she has worked on HIV/AIDS, mental health, and health promotion in the context of social marginalization and migration. She also made important contributions to the development of research ethics in the social sciences. She currently acts as an elected member of the board of the section “qualitative methods of social science research” at the German Sociological Association. She is also the chair of the research ethics board at the faculty of social sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.

Prof. Laurence J. Kirmayer
MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC,James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University

Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC is James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University and Director of the McGill Global Mental Health Program. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, a Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute, and Director of the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, where he conducts research on culturally responsive mental health services, the mental health of Indigenous peoples, and the anthropology and philosophy of psychiatry. His publications include the edited volumes, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (University of British Columbia Press, 2008), and Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health (Cambridge, 2015).