Our Trustees and Management Committee
AIDA ALAYARIAN
Aida Alayarian, with Josephine Klein, founded the Refugee Therapy Centre, and served as CEO, Clinical Director and training programme leader until March 2017. She remains a Trustee and involved with training. Aida is a chartered consultant clinical psychologist, specialising as a paediatric psychoanalyst and child psychotherapist since 1986, and adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist since 1998 with a background in medicine. Over three decades, Aida has worked with children, young adults and families in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural settings in the statutory and voluntary sectors. Prior to RTC, she worked for seven years at NAFSIYAT, and for a period managed children and family referrals. She was Head of Therapy Services and Chair of the Fostering and Adoption panel at the Childcare Co-operative. Aida served at the NHS at South London & Maudsley NHS Trust and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trusts. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a honorary fellow of the UKCP and an A. Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She sat on the executive board of the UKCP-CPJA as Treasurer for two years and as acting Chair for another two years. She is a member of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (WACP) and since 2012 she has sat as the Chair of the Special Interest Group (SIG) in Psychotherapy of the WACP.
After thirteen years of offering a one year foundation course in psychodynamic theories as they apply to working with refugees and other people who have endured extreme trauma, Aida developed, and until 2017, was the Programme Leader of a four year professional training and MA course with the University of East London as well as the Professional Doctorate in Intercultural Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in partnership with Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Sarah Grainger
Sarah Grainger trained as a journalist and worked for the BBC for ten years both in London and overseas in Uganda and Venezuela. She also spent several years reporting for Reuters in Guatemala. In 2013, she moved into the third sector, training journalists in South Sudan with the iNGO Internews, and working in communications for UNICEF in Indonesia. Since 2014, she has worked in strategic communications for a number of third sector organisations in the UK.
ZUBEYDE ARABACI
Zubeyde Arabaci was born in Turkey. She studied psychological counselling and guidance. As the result of her involvement in political campaigns for human rights, she was persecuted. She had to leave and became a refugee in 1999. She joined the RTC as a volunteer and student on the introductory course and soon became its Community Development Worker and also Mentoring Project Coordinator. Besides her individual clients, Zudeyde with other colleagues set up the Story Telling Women’s Group with the aim of supporting participants to improve their language skills, to break isolation, to build new social contacts and to feel empowered and regain their self-esteem.
GORDON ALDERSON
Gordon is a psychotherapist in private practice. He has worked in the NHS offering both individual and group psychotherapy. He is also a training supervisor.
Our Patrons
Mr Jeremy Corbyn - MP
Jeremy has consistently been elected M.P for Islington North since 1983, including in the most recent election in July 2024. Prior to his election to Parliament, Jeremy was an elected Councillor in the London Borough of Haringey from 1974 to 1983. Jeremy was the Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group and Vice-Chair of the Western Sahara Group (APPG). His national profile is based on his action against poverty, and in support of social security, environmental and human rights questions both at home and internationally. He has a weekly column in The Morning Star. A long-time supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, he is now a Vice President. He was opposed to the Iraq war and has spoken at many anti-war rallies in the UK and abroad. He is Deputy President of the Stop the War Coalition.
As an MP Jeremy is a committed anti-fascist having spoken at the Unite Against Fascism and Barking and Dagenham TUC anti-British National Party rally and calling for no platform for the BNP. As a member of the National Council of CND Jeremy has spoken at, and attended, human rights and peace conferences including in Beijing, New Delhi, UN/Geneva. He has had significant involvement in campaigning against miscarriages of justice. He has campaigned hard for decent pension provision for all, against racism, and on the major issues affecting his constituents, especially unemployment, housing, disability and low pay.
He attends the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on a regular basis.
Professor Eva Hoffman
Born in Poland in 1945 to Holocaust survivor parents, writer Eva Hoffman is the author of several books, including the widely regarded Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language and most recently, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews.
Having received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard, Eva Hoffman has been a professor of literature and of creative writing at several institutions including Columbia, the University of Minnesota, and Tufts; she was an editor and writer at The New York Times from 1979-90, serving as senior editor of "The Book Review" from 1987-90. In her newest book, "After Such Knowledge," she addresses what the Holocaust means to the second generation, children of survivors. In 1959 during the Cold War, after her Jewish parents survived the Holocaust by hiding in the Ukraine, the thirteen year old Eva, her nine year old sister and her parents immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. Upon graduating from high school she received a scholarship and studied English Literature at Rice University, Texas in 1966, then went on to study at the Yale School of Music from 1967 to 1968, and then Harvard University where she received a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1974.
Eva has been a professor of literature and creative writing at various institutions such as Columbia University, University of Minnesota, and Tufts. From 1979 to 1990, she worked as an editor and writer at the New York Times, serving as senior editor of "The Book Review" from 1987 to 1990. In 1990, she received the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1992, the Guggenheim Fellowship for General Nonfiction, as well as the Whiting Writers' Award. In 2000, Eva was the Una Lecturer at the Townsend Centre for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2008, she was awarded by the University of Warwick. Eva leads a seminar in memoir once every two years at part of CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.
Professor Roland Littlewood
Roland Littlewood is a Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at the University College London Centre for Medical Anthropology. He was the winner of the Welcome Medal for Anthropology as applied to Medicine, and the Wilde Lecturer in Natural Religion, Oxford 1998-1999, and has had numerous other honours. Roland is the author of a number of important publications including the standard Littlewood and Lipsedge (1982) Aliens and Alienists: Ethnic Minorities and Psychiatry and Littlewood and Kareem (1992) Intercultural Therapy: Themes, Interpretations and Practice.
Mr Claude Moraes OBE
Claude Moraes was elected to the European Parliament for London in 1999 and again in 2004 where he led the London List of candidates. He was one of the first Asian MEPs and London's first ethnic minority MEP. Claude was previously Director of JCWI, the national migration and refugee charity and Chief Executive of the Immigrants' Aid Trust. Before that, he was a national officer at the TUC, a representative to the European TUC in Brussels, House of Commons adviser to MPs John Reid and Paul Boateng, and a CRE Commissioner. With a legal background, he has campaigned and written widely on human rights issues including recently co-authoring the 'Politics of Migration' (Blackwells). In the European Parliament he was Labour spokesperson on Employment and Social Affairs and a member of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
Peter Stefanovic
Peter is a high profile lawyer, blogger, campaigner, Labour supporter and political and social commentator with a social media following of more than 100,000 and a weekly post reach of 3 million. He is a former Partner at Simpson Millar LLP where he was heralded as one of the UK's most successful Clinical Negligence Lawyers. Peter is cited in the Legal 500 as a leader in his field and was nominated for Legal Personality of the Year in 2016. He is a member of both the Law Society and AVMA specialist Panels. In 2015 Peter turned the NHS debate on its head by crossing the Court room floor to stand with Junior doctors in a contract dispute with the Government which Peter argued was unfair and unsafe. He is a champion for social Justice and the NHS. He is a weekly columnist in THE WORD Newspaper and regularly appears on television and radio (Sputnik, LBC, talk radio, THE WORD TV and Radio). His video reply to Laura Kuenssberg was watched by 1.2 Million People in 3 days. Peters films and political commentaries are viewed by millions.