Nathalie Herschdorfer (1972, Switzerland) is a curator and art historian specializing in the history of photography. She is the Director of the museum Photo Elysée, the cantonal photography museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Before that, as Director of the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle, she organized important shows featuring the work of Henri Cartier- Bresson, Stanley Kubrick, Vik Muniz, Alex Prager, Viviane Sassen, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Andy Warhol, amongst others.

She is an active voice in contemporary photography and has been invited to organize numerous exhibitions outside Switzerland.

She teaches the history of photography at the Lausanne University of Art and Design (ECAL) and is the author of several books, including: Body: The Photography Book (2019); Mountains by Magnum Photographers (2019); The Thames& Hudson Dictionary of Photography (2018); Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast (2012); and Afterwards: Contemporary Photography Confronting the Past (2011).

Enny Das (PhD, 2001) is the research director of the Centre for Language Studies, and professor of communication and persuasion at the Faculty of Arts of Radboud University. She is PI of the research group Language and Communication Effects. Her research focuses on how message form and content affect information processing, receiver attitudes and behavior, often in the health communication context. Using different methods, she examines language use, framing, and narrative effects in doctor-patient conversations, news media including social media, and entertainment media.

Raised as a psychologist, and traversing several different research paradigms throughout her career, her research has a strong interdisciplinary focus, synthesizing insights from psychology, communication and information science, and medicine. Current research projects include the function of death in entertainment (NWO Open Competition), the use of social media analytics to inform cancer screening programs (ZonMW Early Detection program), and the role of culture and gender in healthcare communication.

Enny has published > 100 international peer reviewed articles in leading journals in the domains of Communication (e.g., Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research), Psychology (e.g., Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology), medicine (Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Clinical Breast Cancer, Patient Education and Counseling). She advises the Dutch government on healthcare policies, as a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands (2019-2023) and in research reports, such as the recent report on the increased demand in transgender care (2023).

Prof. Das is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Media Psychology, editorial board member of the Journal of Communication and the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. She is a member of the Academia Europaea.

Gerd Kvale is professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of Bergen and founder and the first director of Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity as well as The Bergen 4-day Clinic at Haukeland University Hospital. She is the previous Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen.

Kvale has a life-long dedication for optimizing and disseminating treatment that works for anxiety disorders and OCD, and in this respect one of her hallmarks is to combine the clinical approach with research on brain plasticity and biological markers for change.

In 2018, Time Magazine listed her among the 50 most influential in Health for her development of a highly effective 4-day treatment for OCD. Recently she has extended her work to develop and evaluate the concentrated treatment format for chronic health challenges like low-back pain, diabetes type 2, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer fatigue and with success also for Long Covid. Most of her career she has worked in cross-disciplinary teams and has an extensive record for training health personnel in the concentrated treatment approach.

In a further effort to find effective ways to disseminate treatment that works, she has now adapted the concentrated treatment for chronic health challenges to a digital format that can be delivered without geographical discrimination.

In recognition of these achievements, she received the 2022 Innovation Award from the Norwegian Research Council for the development of the concentrated treatment for OCD and anxiety disorders.

Claudine Burton-Jeangros (PhDin sociology, MSc in Health Promotion) is professor at the Institute of Sociological Research at theUniversity of Geneva. After her bachelor insociology at the University of Geneva, she worked in different public health settings, in Switzerland and in the United States. Following a master in Health Promotion at the University of Cardiff, she obtained a PhDin Sociology at the University of Geneva.

She is conducting research and teaching in the fields of sociology of risk, sociology of health, and global health. On the one hand she developed projects on how meanings associated to health and illness have been reshaped by the idea of risk, a now dominant category in prevention messages and medical practices,and in society in general. Contrasted understandings of risk can either increase demands towards healthcare systems andreinforce medicalization, or generate social mobilization and resistance towards health institutions. She has been involved in studies on attitudes and practices towards risks in a range of issues, such as HIV/AIDS andre-emerginginfectiousdiseases,immunization, cancer and prenatal screening, as well aspersonalizedmedicine.

Second, she has been interested in the distribution of health across the population, with analyses of health inequalities along a number of socio-economic determinants. These analyses have included a temporal perspective with research on health trajectories conducted in the context of theNCCRLIVES(Overcoming vulnerability –a lifecourse perspective). She co-led amixed methods project in Geneva assessing the consequences of regularization on undocumented migrants’ health trajectories and living conditions (ProjectParchemins). A collaboration with colleagues at the University of Gent in Belgium led to analyses of cancer screening inequalities across Switzerland, Belgium and other European countries (PREVENTproject).These two distinct fields of research converge in looking at the actual experiences of health, as they are shaped by social determinants, and by the meanings associated with these experiences. In these projects, she combines quantitative and qualitative research, convinced that they complement each other in the understanding of the complex social mechanisms that contribute to shape health in contemporary societies.

Nicolas Senn is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland. He also heads the Department of Family Medicine at Unisanté in Lausanne, where he is responsible for teaching and research in family medicine.

After initial training in general medicine, he completed a PhD in epidemiology at the Swiss TPH in Basel and worked for several years in Australia and Papua New Guinea on clinical malaria prevention research projects for children. Currently, while maintaining a clinical activity in family medicine, he is developing research projects linked to the organization of health systems and questions of the environmental sustainability of healthcare services. As such, he co-edited the book “Santé et environnement: vers une nouvelle approche globale” (Health and environment: towards a new global approach) for Editions RMS.

He has also co-written a roadmap with the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences entitled “Pour les services de santé dans les limites planétaires” (for healthcare services within planetary boundaries). From this perspective, he is interested in better understanding how environmental considerations such as global warming or biodiversity loss could be integrated into healthcare services, what influence this might have on the practice of medicine and more generally on the socio-ecological transformation of the society.

Prof. Roland von Känel, MD, is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy and in general internal medicine. Since 2018, he has been the Director of the Department of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Mediicne at the University Hospital Zurich and Full Professor of Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Previously, he was Head of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Clinic Barmelweid in the Canton of Aargau, Head of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Bern University Hospital for over 10 years, and Full Professor of Psychosomatic and Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Bern.

His clinical focus is on psychocardiology aka behavioral cardiology, stress-related diseases and persistent somatic symptoms, including chronic pain and fatigue. His research investigates the psychobiological mechanisms and interactions of mental and physical diseases with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease. He is the author of over 450 scientific articles and book chapters and is on the editorial board of several psychosomatic journals.

Dr Michael Sharpe MD FACLP is Emeritus Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Oxford in the UK and a Consultation-Liaison Psychiatrist at Oxford University Hospitals.

In his work he aims to improve the lives of the medically ill by integrating psychiatric and psychological interventions into their care. He has published more than 320 papers on this topic and established the renowned ‘Integrated Psychological Medicine’ service in the Oxford University Hospitals.

Dr Sharpe is President of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Integrated Care (EAPM) and a past President of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP).

In 2023 he was recipient of both the American Psychiatric Association’s ‘Adolf Meyer Award’ for achievement in psychiatric research and the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry’s ‘Eleanor and Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award’ for outstanding contributions to the field.

Annette Boenink, psychiatrist, is the head of the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry in Amsterdam UMC, location Vumc. She studied Medicine at the University Maastricht – enjoying the experimental small group educational system -, and specialized in Psychiatry at the UMCG in Groningen. Afterwards she worked at the Psychiatric CL-Service at the VU Hospital in Amsterdam, at the time headed by Frits Huyse. She succeeded him after his resignation, and building on his work, she expanded the CL service into a full-fledged hospital psychiatry department with a Medical – Psychiatry Unit and an outpatient clinic: the Amsterdam UMC Centre for Psyche & Soma.
Annettes commitment to delivering integrated care that is founded on an understanding of a patient’s values, is accompanied by a commitment to teaching. Education was also the topic of her PhD thesis titled: “Teaching and Learning Reflection on Medical Professionalism”.
She participated in the EACLPP Workgroup on Training in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatics. She is an active member of the EAPM Special Interest Group Integrated Care and Management of Complexity, and of the Intermed consortium.

She contributed to Dutch guidelines about C-L Psychiatry, General Hospital
Psychiatry and field standards for Med-Psych Units. She co-edited Dutch textbooks about Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Hiv and psychiatry and wrote book chapters about Medical care for psychiatric patients, and about Multidisciplinary care.

Annette has been a board member of the National organization of Consultation-Liaison and Hospital Psychiatrists (ACZP) and the Dutch Federation for Hospital Psychiatry (NFZP).

Her current interests are the implementation of Shared Decision Making and fostering interprofessional learning around integrated care for complex patients.

Professor Bernd Löwe, MD, is Full Professor and Head of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany (UKE). Previously, he held clinical and research positions at the Medical University Hospitals in Heidelberg, Germany, and Indianapolis, USA. Dr Löwe is an internist, specialist in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, psychologist and psychotherapist.

Dr Löwe has devoted his research to the interaction of somatic and psychological factors in various medical conditions¸ including gastroenterological, cardiac and infectious diseases as well as functional somatic syndromes and somatic symptom disorders. This work led to the research unit 5211 “SOMACROSS” on persistent somatic symptoms, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2021, of which he is the spokesperson. Dr Löwe has also developed and validated a number of internationally used psychometric instruments, including self-report questionnaires for anxiety (GAD-7), somatic symptom severity (SSS-8), psychological distress associated with somatic symptoms (SSD-12), treatment expectations (TEX-Q) and many others. He has founded several local, national and international research groups, including EURONET-SOMA, a group of European scientists aiming to improve the diagnosis and treatment of persistent somatic symptoms.

He is the author of more than 400, mostly highly cited, scientific articles and book chapters (approx. 70,000 citations). He is on the editorial board of several scientific psychosomatic journals. In 2020 he was awarded the Wayne Katon Research Award of the Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP) for his current studies on psychopathology in the medically ill.

Originally from Romania, Dana Pamfile studied medicine in Bucarest and Paris before completing her initial training in general internal medicine at the University Hospital of Strasbourg. Following her experience as a consultant internist in a psychiatric hospital in France, she developed a passion for psychopathology and decided to specialize in psychiatry. She then relocated to Switzerland where she completed the double board certification in psychiatry and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In 2016 she obtained a certificate of advanced studies in transgender health from Paris Diderot University.

Since 2022 she leads the Gender Dysphoria Clinic which she co-funded within the Psychiatric Liaison Service at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) under the guidance of Prof. Fritz Stiefel and in collaboration with Dr. Laurent Michaud, head of the Outpatient Liaison psychiatry Unit. Additionally, she works as a consultant psychiatrist for the Fertility Medicine Unit at CHUV, while also fulfilling teaching roles at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine (University of Lausanne) and at the Institute of Psychotherapy (Department of Psychiatry, CHUV). She holds membership in the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and in the Clinical Ethics Committee at the Lausanne University Hospital.

Dr. Pamfile’s main interests lie in psychodynamic interventions within liaison psychiatry, the development and evolution of (trans)gender identities, psychological support in medically assisted reproduction and recurrent pregnancy loss, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with young adults.

Passionate about teaching, she coordinates a short interdisciplinary training program in transgender health, developed in collaboration with the University of Lausanne and the Lausanne University Hospital. Dr. Pamfile is regularly invited to lecture and provide clinical supervision in her area of expertise and (co-)authored several research articles, case reports, and position papers.

Laurent Michaud, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He is a senior staff member of the Psychiatric Liaison Service of Lausanne University Hospital (Switzerland), Privat-Docent. Co-founder and past president of the Swiss French speaking group for suicide prevention (www.g-r-p-s.ch), he has been active in research, clinical practice and teaching in mental health for the past twenty years and in suicide prevention for the past ten years. In consultation-liaison, he is interested in clinical supervision of health professionals and communication in oncology, with several ongoing projects, as well as in gender-related issues, including LGBTQI+.

He leaded several scientific and public health projects on suicide prevention, which used various qualitative and quantitative methodologies and were funded by several public funds. His research focused on interventions after suicide attempts, the emotional experience of clinicians meeting suicidal patients, and completed suicides of psychiatric patients.

On the clinical and teaching levels, Dr Michaud is a trainer of trainers for the module ” Facing suicidal risk” and is involved in numerous courses in the field of mental health and suicide prevention (e.g. leading a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) on psychoanalysis and institutions or being in the board two other CAS on (i) psychosomatic and psychosocial medicine and (ii) psycho-oncology).

He regularly appears in the regional and national media for his expertise in suicide prevention. In addition to his academic and hospital clinical-based activities, he practices psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as a fellow of the Swiss psychoanalytical society.