Cinzia Albanesi

What attracted you to community psychology?

I was always looking for something like community psychology – it just took me a while to find it and even longer to find any space to be able to consistently research within it. What I mean by this, is that I was always looking for something with a wider focus than the individual alone. Always looking for something more focused on social justice, more political, both aware of wider structural issues and resolved to tackle them.

In my undergraduate degree and beyond, I spent quite a lot of time exploring other parts of psychology. Thinking: this is interesting, but doesn’t seem to go wide enough. To be honest, I’m not even sure the phrase “community psychology” was mentioned during my first degree. And if no one tells you about it, you don’t necessarily know it is there. Community psychology can remain quite hidden.

We explore this a bit in two pieces of recent research (Thompson et al, 2022; Thompson & Thomas, 2023). In one study, we talked to qualified UK clinical psychologists with an interest in critical community psychology. We asked them how they came to have a relationship with critical community psychology and they told us about their own lifespan events, which often involved the interaction of their wider principles and politics. They also told us about their somewhat awkward interactions with psychology – where they kept waiting and wanting for more critical and community psychology related content. In the other study, we asked UK psychology undergraduate students about their perceptions of critical community psychology having been introduced to it as part of the study. A number of participants wished they had already known about it – and wanted more education around it, not just for themselves as students, but also for the wider public.

An event that was formative for your engagement with community psychology?

Community psychology is not an especially easy path to follow in the UK. So, I took a much more established and clearly defined route and became a clinical psychologist, working in the NHS in the field of chronic pain, before moving into higher education.

My formative community psychology experiences came during my clinical training. During the course, we did have at least one session on community psychology. If I’m honest – though I highly regard the person who led the session – I don’t remember a single thing about its content. But clinical training did give me a book budget, and made me aware of wider meetings and conferences. Bookwise, I purchased, “Writings for a Liberation Psychology” by Martín-Baró, the first edition of “Critical Psychology: an introduction” by Fox and Prilleltensky and two books by David Smail. It was the critical psychology text I started reading first. I distinctly remember being sat outside, in the sunshine, reading the preface and first chapter, thinking: “Wow. I didn’t think you were allowed to say things like that”.

The first community psychology event I attended, was around the same time, way back in 2003. It was the “Community and Critical Psychology Conference” in Birmingham. I think the event had sold out, and I had to wait for a cancellation in order to attend. I’m sure there were many inspiring sessions at the conference, but the memory that stayed with me, was from a plenary talk, or the Q&A that took place after, where I remember sitting there thinking: “Oh, we’re just being critical of CBT. Is that it? Is that all we’re going to do? Is that as radical as it gets?”

So, on the one hand there was the excitement of attending a community psychology event, and on the other the somewhat more mundane content being discussed in that specific session. And this came against the backdrop of the explicitly political content that I was excited to read in Fox and Prilleltensky. The contrast was interesting.

With hindsight, this tension remains interesting and relevant. In fact, we explore this a bit in Thompson et al. (2022). We asked participants how they bring their interest in critical community psychology into their NHS clinical work. Participants told us it can be hard given the confines of NHS practice. Moreover, some of the things they told us about seemed more like good contemporary clinical practice – rather than anything more radical or transformative. Still, arguably, forms of community psychology, but perhaps not especially distinct or different.

In your assessment, what is future of community psychology in Britain?

I think, in some ways, the future can be anything we want it to be. But, as with everything, we have to organise and fight for it. Community psychology in the UK is not especially well developed. It exists in pockets: inside the NHS, inside academia, inside the charity sector, even inside politics. Back in 2003 – and again in 2007 – Mark Burton and Carolyn Kagan – wrote great papers about the state of community psychology in the UK. One titled: “Community psychology: Why this gap in Britain?”. Over 20 years on from that first paper, it is tempting to ask whether the gap has widened or narrowed?

Rather than answering that question here, perhaps a related story might be useful. I virtually attended the international community psychology conference in Naples in September 2021. There was a great session titled: “New volumes in CP” where panelists spoke about new community psychology book titles from Italy, South Africa, Germany, the UK and elsewhere.

When the speakers talked about their books, they spoke about the state of community psychology in their own countries. Of course, if you’re promoting a book, you might talk up the health of community psychology at home. But one speaker, who wasn’t from the UK, just said (words to the effect of): “Community psychology has been fading away from the universities here. So this new text may not be especially innovative. But we need to be honest about how things are, join together and move forward”.

This really struck me, and made me think that part of the work we should be doing is building better structures that allow us to get to know each other and work together, beyond our national borders. Getting better connected globally on a day-to-day basis. Of course, we have our biannual international conference – with the next being in Uruguay. And in the UK, we have a regular community psychology festival. But how are we encouraging people with an interest in community psychology to meet, network and collaborate outside of these events? Could we be doing more – especially during the climate and ecological emergencies when we should arguably be flying less? For example, could we create a global, lightweight, digital forum, that helps us organise and shape our shared futures as a discipline? Something that includes but maybe goes beyond organising bodies like ECPA and SCRA?

Two other things to consider when thinking about the future. While it continues to be great to see new books and chapters about community psychology coming out – could we be doing more to ensure our future publications are Diamond Open Access? Where authors don’t pay processing charges and readers can access digital versions fast and for free. “Community Psychology in Global Perspective” and the “Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice” are leading the way in terms of journal articles. And Jason et al., (2019) have published a freely accessible Introduction to Community Psychology textbook. But is there more we could be doing more to give our knowledge away when we write books and chapters? (For a recent blog about these issues see Thompson & Clark, 2023).

Finally, when planning for the future. Let’s not assume all of today’s students are coming to community psychology positively or even neutrally. In one of our recent studies (Thompson & Thomas, 2023), we found a small subset of students who felt that statements related to critical community psychology were not relevant to: i.) individual mental health, ii.) to psychology, and even iii.) not relevant as ideas.

In what ways can community psychology contribute in tackling issues for marginalized people facing climate change?

Three thoughts: First, by doing some of things we do best. Meeting with people, groups and communities where they are, in the contexts they find themselves. And then genuinely working together as partners and co-researchers to tackle the issues that matter most to them.

Secondly, acknowledging that community psychology does not have all the answers – or all the leverage, and so using our networks, to draw in others from academia, from health and social settings, from charities, NGO and activist networks to help tackle the issues that marginalised people and communities face.

Thirdly, I think I’d ask – are the first two enough? Not just in terms of climate change, but in terms of our work generally. Have we – in our history to date – done enough to hold the limiting structures and the powerful to account? Are we able to show consistent success at changing things in truly transformative ways? Not just at local levels, but also at national and international levels? Because this is what tackling the climate and ecological emergency requires.

How do we combine: i.) on the one hand our partnership working with marginalized communities. And on the other ii.) forcing progressive, positive movement from governments, corporations, and international bodies who arguably seem steadfast in upholding the status quo? The outcomes of the recent COP28 seem to have given us nothing more than what Greta Thunberg rightly identifies as “blah, blah, blah”. There are no easy answers here, but this is something we grapple with in a recent paper (Thompson et al., 2023). In it, we explore participant generated examples of environmental and wider social challenges as a tool to reflect on climate change and community psychology. In the discussion, as others have already done, we highlight the role of capitalism and neoliberalism. But beyond highlighting it – how do we challenge and change it? How do we even dent it? In the paper we highlight the role of critical consciousness. Not just raising awareness, but also promoting focused critical action. One of the challenges of the climate and ecological emergencies is the way it demands that we work across all levels from the micro to the macro – but with change necessarily needing to happen urgently at the macro level. Again, no easy answers – but vitally important work for us all to do.

What attracted you to community psychology?

Within the academic field, I have been fortunate to have had mentors who helped me to mature intellectually, to initiate me in committed and socially useful research, and to meet a scientific community—that of community psychology—with the same intellectual concerns and personal values as me. Specifically, it was Prof. Manuel García-Ramírez who introduced me to Liberation Psychology and, from there, I came across community psychology.

From the beginning, I was “in love” with Ignacio Martín-Baró, the greatest exponent of Liberation Psychology, a current that emerged in the 1970s in Latin America. This current emphasizes the role that structural dynamics and asymmetrical relations of power play in human suffering. It also encourages building a transformative practice from academia that advocates for the rights and well-being of oppressed people. I remember that one of the first texts that Prof. Manuel García-Ramírez shared with me was “War and Mental Health”.

Later, I did a research stay at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador, where Martín-Baró did most of his work. I still fondly remember how I dusted off many of his writings from the shelves of the university library. I went crazy photocopying all the material I could find of his—at a time when his work was not yet digitized. In fact, the folder with all this material that I brought back to Spain is still one of my greatest academic treasures.

What makes community psychology attractive for you?

For me, community psychology (CP) is attractive because I feel that this discipline aligns with my own intellectual concerns and personal values.

My parents raised me in a family environment characterized by intellectual restlessness and concern and help for people in socially vulnerable situations. My upbringing took place largely within a Christian community in a working-class neighborhood. Before I was born, my parents decided to move from a more privileged area of the city to this neighborhood, as a way of being consistent with their own ideals and values. This decision by my parents meant that I grew up in an attentive and intellectually stimulating family environment (my father always had a book to offer me, and my mother accompanied me every afternoon when doing my school homework), along with a largely challenging social environment. For example, I remember that my high school was right next to a slum settlement and my peers were—what I would now consider—an at-risk population in terms of drug use, dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, etc. At the same time, I remember going with my parents to various demonstrations, protesting in front of the courts against the imprisonment of people who opted for insubordination, temporarily hosting homeless people at home, receiving recurring visits from people with mental health problems or with some kind of functional diversity, etc. We were a family firmly rooted and involved with the reality of our environment.

All this undoubtedly had an impact on my way of being, my dreams, fears, concerns, etc., which clearly led to my professional choice. So, this is why CP was attractive to me (and I decided to specialize in it): because I thought it was a way to be useful to others through my work, contributing as far as I could to generate more individual well-being and social justice in our world.

Please tell us about an event that was formative for your engagement with community psychology.

It is difficult for me to think of a single event. Rather, I believe that it was a series of events that took place at the beginning of my formative period as a researcher (2007-2010) that were key to understanding my engagement with community psychology.

In 2007, when I finished my degree in psychology, I helped Prof. Manuel García-Ramírez to organize in Seville the seminar “Integrating New Migrants in New Europe: A Challenge for Community Psychology”. Here, I had the opportunity to meet in person Isaac Prilleltensky and Maritza Montero, two authors I had already read. Hearing them firsthand was exciting. In 2008, we founded CESPYD: The Center for Community Research and Action at the University of Seville. That same year, I participated in my first conference in CP (which coincided with the II International Conference that took place in Lisbon, Portugal). Both events helped me to deepen my identity as a community psychologist.

In 2009, I made a research stay in El Salvador, where I could learn about the work of Martín-Baró and witness situations of oppression that consolidated my interest in doing work that would serve to advocate for social change. That same year, I also participated in the 12^th Biennial Conference of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) in New Jersey, USA. This brought me closer to the scientific community in the United States, something that was consolidated to a great extent after a research stay at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010, invited by Fabricio Balcázar.

In your assessment, why is community psychology very useful for working with immigrants?

My studies have been analyzing the degree of subjective well-being—and other related variables—of migrants and refugees in situations of social vulnerability. To this end, I have understood that mental health is closely linked both to individual strengths and the existing social justice in the receiving context. On the other hand, my studies have been characterized by trying to improve this subjective well-being. To this end, I have designed community-based intervention proposals that make use of the community’s own strengths and resources, in order to increase mental health by promoting processes of resilience and psychological empowerment (moving away from individualistic and pathologizing visions).

In this sense, CP offers me a valuable conceptual framework to (a) understand mental health from an ecological or multilevel approach, where the intersecting oppressive social determinants have a great impact on the lives of migrants; (b) design, implement, and evaluate community interventions from a collaborative approach with other social agents and allied disciplines; (c) emphasize the strengths of migrant people and communities, who are considered agents of change; (d) respect, value, and celebrate cultural diversity; and (e) consider research as a way to understand social reality, transform it, and advocate for more inclusive and fair policies.

What are the main challenges community psychologists in Spain are facing today?

In Spain, the Official College of Psychology only defines the specialty of “Social Intervention Psychology,” presenting it as the field within psychology interested in contributing to the study and improvement of social problems. The reference journal in Spain within this field is Psychosocial Intervention. Thus, CP itself is not formally defined, and can be considered as a specific approach within Social Intervention Psychology. This means that there is no easy identification as a “community psychologist.” Moreover, in the academic field, communication networks among psychologists who define themselves as “community psychologists” are scarce. Therefore, I believe that one of the main challenges is to establish meetings within the Spanish territory to identify ourselves, share projects, and seek synergies among us.

Please provide a painting (or mural) that, for you, symbolizes what CP is about.

I have chosen the painting “Almond Blossom” by Vincent van Gogh, painted during his stay in the psychiatric center of Saint-Rémy (France) in 1890. This painting suggests to me the importance of beauty, the beginning of spring and of a new life. CP, like an almond blossom, represents for me hope in life and in a better world.

What attracted you to community psychology?

I was already fascinated by the systemic approach and its philosophical background when I started to study psychology. Switching the focus from the individual to a meta-level perspective on the interaction and its dynamic process gave me new insights. The content of psychology at the university was already on the road to mainstream psychology, but there were also teachers with an attitude and association to community and health psychology. For instance, Prof. Lothar R. Schmidt was focusing on the empowerment and social context of psychiatric patients and was supporting the political process to bring back the psychiatric individuals from an institution to the community. I was also interested in courses for environmental psychology and the salutogenetic approach of health psychology at the university.

With this mind set, I started as a scientific employee in practice-oriented health promotion and prevention projects. A European and interdisciplinary project on community based addiction prevention with the ideas of community development and bottom-up strategies with a systemic focus on the responsible adults (and not on the drugs and kids) was the beginning process to come closer to the practical and theoretical concepts of community psychology. Curiously, I participated in the conference of the German Association of Research and Practice of Community Psychology (GGFP) and found a warm-hearted group with interesting discussions and different approaches to run a conference. All along, I was involved further on in and initiated new community-oriented projects and I participated more often in the conferences of the GGFP, which strengthened my identity as a community psychologist over the time.

What makes community psychology attractive for you?

Community psychology (CP) presents concepts going further than looking only on the individual behaviour. It focuses on the social, political and cultural context in which the different people and groups are interacting. CP reflects the different perspectives and needs of involved community groups, and also the contextual situation within they are acting and thinking (culture, implicit and explicit rules and structures, distribution of power and resources etc.). CP is target-oriented in enhancing the well-being of the individuals of a community in consistency with the well-being of the whole community.

CP especially focuses on socially disadvantaged or powerless groups and enables their empowerment and participation in the community. The main questions are mostly: “who is (or has the power of) defining a problem and who has the power to decide for a possible solution?”. If the concerning persons are not involved in the two questions, the so-called solutions will mostly fail in the end.

CP supports diversity and the salutogenetic approach (with an important influence on the WHO concept of health promotion and mental health).

CP had an important and sustainable influence on the psychiatric reform process. It is still supporting improvements together with psychiatric patients.

CP focuses on contextual structures, which enables (Sen, 1999) even persons with disadvantages to realize their aims in a self-determined way and degrades care structures, which makes them helpless, powerless and passive.

CP uses the ‘local’ knowledge of the persons concerned. Generalized expert knowledge has not the absolute power. In consequence, CP supports also self-help groups.

CP uses proactive communication and discussions between different groups to clarify contradictions, to enable understanding of the others, and sometimes to find acceptable solutions. Furthermore, CP stimulates social networking.

CP favours bottom-up (or grassroots) instead of top-down strategies.

CP uses the power of community development and civic engagement for changing situations in the sense of the concerned persons.

CP is multidisciplinary oriented, as it is relevant in all disciplines concerning human communities and their institutional contexts or environments (health, education, social life, municipalities, architecture, environment).

CP uses research to realize social solutions for a better life, mostly involving the concerned persons in the research or evaluation process (action and participative research).

Please tell us about an event or experience that was formative for your engagement with CP.

As you can see in the answer for the first question, it was rather a continuous identity-formation process on the way to the harbour of CP than a single event. The process intensified during my scientific work in the project for community-based addiction prevention. In dealing with useful concepts for community development, involving community members for engagement and prevention, the concepts of CP were fitting this need very well.

In your assessment, what is the potential power of CP to respond to the wave of anti-immigration, or xenophobic tendencies in Germany and/or Europe?

That’s a difficult question. The conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) tells us that people have more fear and stressful emotions for losing resources than to have no access to new resources. This happens already if they are expecting to lose resources in the future. In dividing people in established and outsider groups (Elias, & Scotson, 1994) the groups (especially the established group) generate their own repetitive narratives about the others and how the others threat their identity, culture, health, material resources and power. These narratives of status quo and expectations are produced and distributed from people in the community, reinforced by political groups and are mostly fare away from direct experience.

CP has the concepts to reinforce the empowerment, integration and participation of migrants and minorities (mostly defined as outsiders from established groups) on the level of local communities and on the political level. The process of separating and defining groups as ‘outsiders’ can be reduced in suspending separation structures and camps (e.g. for migrants and asylum seekers). The stereotype narratives are a great challenge in the digital media society with the self-selection and algorithm controlled information access in a bubble. Other and positive narratives have to be distributed and direct experience and communication possibilities between the groups are needed to build up new narratives.

What are the main challenges community psychologists in Germany are facing today?

The presence of CP in the professional community and in public: Acting in a way of community psychology, but not referring on it and telling about it, seems to be a problem to recognize community psychology. The more CP concepts are seemed to being integrated in other disciplines (but not sustainable), the more it seems to disappear as a ‘brand’ in the conscious mind. With the new “Handbook of Community Psychology in Germany”, we try to bring the brand ‘CP’ back to consciousness.

Defend human rights for migrants and minorities: Human rights are in danger international, in Europe and also in Germany, regarding the tendency of political opinions and the growing parties on the far right wing. Besides the challenge to achieve new enabling chances, it seems that we have to defend already gained rights and resources for minorities.

CP confronted with the digital age: The rapid development of the digital technology with its consequences for the working situation and mental health, but also for the social work itself, brings up questions, how to deal with it. Challenges of social networking and risks of alienation have to be discussed and will be a topic of the next issue of the German journal of CP “Forum Gemeindepsychologie”.

Is there a painting (or mural) that symbolizes what CP is about?

Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos upon Río Pinturas, near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The art in the cave dates between 13,000–9,000 BP.

What attracted you to community psychology?

I found community psychology from professional practice. During my final year of psychology degree studies, I started working on a community project in the Torre Baró neighborhood in Barcelona. This was a project that aimed to contribute to the community organisation to build together with the Barcelona City Council a new urban plan for that neighborhood. It was the 2000-2001 academic year. And when I finished my psychology studies in June 2001, I started to find out what type of psychology I could connect with what I was doing. I knew that the tools and knowledge I had known about social psychology did not fill all the concerns and challenges that I faced is this project, which began being 6 months for an urban plan and ended up lasting 4 years for the integral transformation of the three neighborhoods that make up the north of Nou Barris, “north of the north” as we said in Barcelona. I quickly realised that community psychology allowed me, as a psychologist, to work not just to imagine a better world, but to try to build it. It allowed me to reinforce a concern I had as a teenager: Trying to change those things that I did not like in the world that I had to live in.

What makes community psychology special?

For me, community psychology (CP) is like a bonsai within psychology. Something small but very nice, something that requires care and affection. What makes it special, though not unique, within psychology is that it is nothing against the current. Because it is a psychology that goes from the person to the macrosocial. That is, it tries to understand what we do by looking at the person, the context, the culture, the laws, the others…. It has a multilevel look, which breaks with the individualising look that prevails in mainstream psychology. CP asserts that many of the psychological and social problems that people experience have their causes or their roots in the collective, and have their solutions, also, in the collective. Because it is a psychology that recognizes the other: One that not only sees their problems or weaknesses but sees their opportunities and potentialities; one that recognizes their abilities to add, that is capable of learning from “the poor”. CP shows what many people do not want to see because it makes inequalities that are normally hidden visible, because CP denounces these inequalities. CP is a power-building effort for oppressed groups.

Please tell us about an event that was formative for your interest in or engagement with community psychology.

Although in the last 20 years I have had the opportunity to participate in many congresses and training events of CP, at local, national and international level, I always remember in a special way the first international conference I attended outside Barcelona. It was the first community, work and family congress, held in Manchester in 2004 (I think). I had the opportunity to participate thanks to the fact that the previous year, at the European Congress of CP held in Barcelona, I had met Carolyn Kagan and Mark Burton, and they invited me to participate in Manchester. It must have been for the youth, for the transformative energy that I felt in the execution of the community project in which I was working at the time, because it was the first time that I attended a congress outside of Spain, and especially because of the fantastic climate created in the congress that I continue to keep an enormous memory of that time. To discover that there were people in other parts of the world who shared passions, values and the desire to change the world. And to discover that it was possible to organize a scientific meeting at a university where all participants could feel welcomed, cared for and recognized remains a huge recollection and impetus for my interest in CP.

From that meeting of 2004, between scientific sessions, innovative workshops and some pints, two milestones emerged that helped me greatly in my academic consolidation in the field of CP. A 6-month stay at the Research Insititute for Health and Social Change (RIHSC) led by Carolyn Kagan between February and July 2008 and a European project, Residency, between 2013 and 2015 led by Mark Webster from the UK. I also had the opportunity to meet Maritza Montero, who offered to translate the presentation I made in Spanish into English. In addition to starting friendships that are still present today. (Thank you Carolyn for sharing that experience.)

In your assessment, what is the future of community psychology in Europe?

The future of CP in Europe is positive, especially in professional terms. The effect of the context on people’s well-being is becoming increasingly evident. And if we talk about taking the context into account, CP is able to look at the social, the political, the cultural, the environmental contexts, and see how they affect people and their interactions. Now, if we look at it in academic terms, CP, like many other disciplines, risks becoming intranscendent. In a discipline locked in itself, worried about publications and impact rates, and moving away from the oppressed groups it committed to make visible. And give up trying to make a fairer world. This is a problem that goes beyond CP and involves the university and the technocratic publishing drift in which it is immersed.

What are the main challenges community psychologists in Spain are facing today?

The main challenge faced by community psychologists in Spain has to do with their professional recognition. It is true that social and community intervention psychologists are recognized in some basic services, such as social services. For years they have been working in different NGOs and they face the challenge of professional recognition of the figure of the general health psychologist. This figure, created by law to regulate the profession of clinical psychology in the private sphere, is becoming a serious threat to the figure of the psychologist of social and community intervention, for whom there is no regulation by law. From many services and NGOs, the idea of a health psychologist has been confused with the idea of psychosocial intervention. It is necessary to generate an in-depth debate in Spain on the need, or not, to promote by law the figure of the psychologist of social and community intervention. I remember having this discussion with some European colleagues, especially with Caterina Arcidiacono of Italy, who defended precisely the importance of having a specific profile for the community psychologist.

Please provide us a photo that, for you, symbolizes what CP is about.

This photo represents the superpowers from our CP students have in their transition from students to professionals. It arises from a session where we work on this transition and ask them to paint their superpowers on a mask. It is in the last sessions of the semester that the class group feels like a community.

How about a song?

Gracias A La Vida by Mercedes Sosa. “Thanks to life!” tells me how lucky I am to be a community psychologist.