The Group Dynamics Seminar series is considered one of the longest running seminar series in the social sciences. It has been running uninterruptedly since it was founded by Kurt Lewin in the 1920’s in Berlin. The seminar series runs every semester on a theme chosen by faculty organizer/s who are affiliated with the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research. A very important feature of this seminar today is its interdisciplinary nature. Recent themes have included political polarization, evolution and human behavior, and cultural psychology.
Global Perspectives on Culture and Health explores fundamental aspects of human life. Culture facilitates human interaction by providing meaning to lived experience. Accounting for culture in both theories and methods potentially advances the study of health by connecting the macro and micro levels of human experience. Yet, culture should be understood as dynamic and complex. It fundamentally shapes individuals and simultaneously is shaped by individuals. The importance of systematically attending to culture includes topics of values, language, immigration, and society.
Theories and methods that incorporate culture hold great potential for advancing the understanding of health outcomes and health trajectories in various global contexts.
The speakers for this series will focus on various aspects of culture and diverse groups living in the U.S. and across the globe to address the ways in which attending to culture helps clarify and overcome challenges to good health.
These events are held Mondays from 3:30 to 5.
In person: ISR Thompson 1430, unless otherwise specified.
Organized by Kristine Ajrouch and Sela Panapasa
Events are not recorded, but as permissions allow, interviews with speakers are later posted to our YouTube playlist.
Event Kickoff (Kristine Ajrouch and Sela Panapasa)
University of Michigan
Series Kickoff
Aug. 31, 2026
Series organizers Kristine Ajrouch and Sela Panapasa provide a brief introduction the series at RCGD's kick-off reception. The series opens with its first speaker on Sept. 14.
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Miguel Arce Rentería is a bilingual cultural neuropsychologist. His research program investigates the sociocultural and environmental determinants of disparities in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) primarily among the Hispanic/Latino/Latinx communities (hereafter Latinx). His current research focus has been on determining factors of reserve and resilience to ADRD among Latinx adults such as understanding the role of bilingualism. Leveraging training as a clinical neuropsychologist, another extension of his research program has been to work with international studies of cognitive aging leading efforts with the harmonization of cognitive data and development of diagnostic algorithms for the classification of mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
This work leverages ongoing studies of cognitive aging both within the United States (i.e., the Washington Heights Inwood Columbia Aging Project [WHICAP], the Offspring Study, and the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke [REGARDS] study), and internationally (i.e., Mexican Health and Aging Study [MHAS], Longitudinal Aging Study in India Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia [LASI-DAD] and others associated with the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) Network) to better understand the sociocultural factors associated with cognitive risk and resilience across Latinx individuals residing in the US and abroad.
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Dr. Margaret P. Moss is a trailblazing figure in nursing, health policy, and Indigenous health advocacy. An enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation with Dakhóta lineage, she holds the distinction of being the first and only American Indian to possess both Nursing and Juris Doctorates. Currently serving as a Professor and the inaugural Associate Dean for Nursing and Health Policy, Advocacy, Access, and Ethics at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Dr. Moss brings 34 years of nursing experience and 23 years in academia to her role.
Throughout her career, Dr. Moss has made significant contributions to healthcare policy and Indigenous health. Her work includes serving as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, contributing to the development of the National Alzheimer's Project Act, and authoring the first nursing textbook on American Indian health. Her expertise has been recognized globally, with positions at institutions like Yale University and the University of British Columbia. Recent accolades include being named to the inaugural Forbes 50 over 50 Impact List in 2021, induction into the National Academy of Medicine in 2023, and selection as a Fellow in the newly established Academy of Diversity Leaders in Nursing by the National Black Nurses Association.
Dr. Moss is recognized as a leader in health policy, legal issues, Indigenous health and health disparities and is asked to advise, program plan and speak on educational issues in these spaces. Dr. Moss’ teaching philosophy is to:
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Dr. Wendy Ellis is an Assistant Professor in Global Health and the Founding Director of the Center for Community Resilience at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. In 2024, she was appointed the Inaugural Director of the Institute for Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Equity at GW. The Equity Institute leverages the resources of a premier research university and invests in transformative community partnerships with the goal of eradicating racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequity worldwide.
The Center for Community Resilience housed in the School of Public Health seeks to improve the health of communities by enabling cross-sectoral partners to align policy, program and practice to address adverse childhood experiences in the context of adverse community environments — or as Dr. Ellis has coined it "The Pair of ACEs". This innovative framing of ACEs, with an explicit focus on equity and prevention, has had a substantial influence on local initiatives, programs, public health initiatives and local, state and federal policy. Using the Pair of ACEs framing, Building Community Resilience networks have successfully led systems and policy change focused on addressing long-standing economic, social and health disparties by partnering with community, integrating service delivery and building political will for change.
The Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative and networks are implementing the BCR process based on Dr. Ellis’ research in designing a strategic approach for multiple systems to align resources, programs and initiatives with community based partners to address adverse childhood experiences and adverse community environments. The BCR approach provides a standardized process to reach a customized solution to promote resilience in communities by improving access to supports and buffers that help individuals 'bounce back' and communities thrive. The BCR process has been adopted by governmental agencies and coalitions in countries across the globe including Canada, Finland, Scotland, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. Here in the United States the BCR collaborative consists of cross-sector coalitions in six regional metropolitan areas based out of Cincinnati, OH; Dallas, TX; Portland, OR; Washington, DC; St. Louis and Kansas City, MO. and Seattle, WA. Dr. Ellis co-authored an article detailing the BCR process, "A New Framework for Addressing Adverse Childhood and Community Experiences: The Building Community Resilience Model" which can be found in the September 2017 Journal of Academic Pediatrics.
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Sarah Abboud employs principles of community-based participatory research and qualitative methods, and aims to develop evidence-based research programs and interventions to improve health outcomes among first- and second-generation Arab immigrants in the U.S.
Dr. Abboud's research explores sexual health at the intersections of immigration, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic identity in this population. This program of research is grounded in social justice and health equity frameworks and has two interrelated tracks: first, sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention among Arab immigrants; and second, sexual and mental health among sexual minority Arab immigrants. Dr. Abboud's advocacy work centers on the (in)visibility of Arab/Middle Eastern & North African (MENA)/South West Asian & North African (SWANA) identity and calls for the inclusion of a separate racial/ethnic identity category on the U.S. census reporting.
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Massy Mutumba’s research is aimed at developing evidence-based approaches to advance the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults globally, with a focus on communities affected by HIV, poverty and structural inequities. Her scholarship centers on the development and evaluation of scalable interventions that address intersecting challenges such as HIV prevention and care engagement, mental health, substance use, and sexual violence among adolescents and youth. Mutumba employs interdisciplinary methods and community-engaged research to ensure that interventions are contextually grounded, culturally responsive and sustainable. Her work integrates psychosocial, behavioral and structural perspectives to uncover barriers and facilitators to health, including stigma, trauma and economic insecurity. She leverages her expertise in psychometrics to develop and validate culturally appropriate measurement tools that assess key constructs such as stigma, mental health and health service utilization. She employs participatory approaches to develop and adapt evidence-based models — such as group-based HIV stigma reduction for educators (GED-HIVSR) and alcohol and drug use risk reduction (ADURR) for adolescents and youth — while working closely with local leaders to promote the utilization of post-sexual-violence health services. Her research spans sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, contributing to the global evidence base on adolescent and youth-centered health programs.
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Dr. Kobayashi's research focuses on the social epidemiology of cognitive aging from a global perspective. She investigates social and economic life course influences on cognitive aging, primarily using data from internationally harmonized longitudinal studies of aging, including older populations of the United States, England, India, China, Mexico, and South Africa. At the University of Michigan, she is a member of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health (CSEPH), the Rogel Cancer Center, and the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. In recognition of her contributions to the social epidemiology of cognitive aging in rural South Africa, she is an Honorary Senior Researcher at the MRC/Wits Rural Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
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Sawsan Abdulrahim’s work centers human rights principles to illuminate and act upon social inequities in health across the life course, with a focus on refugee populations and labor migrants in the Arab region and beyond. She is the lead author of the Arab Watch Report 2023 on the Right to Health, a live document intended to inform policy and advocacy efforts toward achieving health for all in the Arab region. Her substantive research areas include migration and health; the syndemic of early marriage and mental distress in forced displacement; and aging and the wellbeing of women migrant care workers. She obtained her doctoral degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut where she teaches courses on health promotion theory, social epidemiology, and forced migration.
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