I came all the way up from Italy to work at the University of Warwick as a teaching fellow on the MSc in Psychotherapy and Counselling. You may be wondering why did I do that? Well, I would say that teaching on this programme seems to me a very good opportunity for sharing with colleagues and students my lived experiences of learning, teaching, and counselling across borders.

Indeed, in the last three decades I have been studying and working internationally in the fields of Languages, Culture, Education and Pastoral Care within university settings and in private practice. I gained most of this experience in the UK, where I lived for 18 years. Then in 2019, I went back to Italy and now I am here again, keen to gain more understanding about the relationships between people from different cultural backgrounds, and how these relationships can add new holistic perspectives on life. As you can gather, I am passionate about human relations and how they evolve depending on the cultural, intergenerational and intra-psychic contexts in which they are being negotiated. This passion inspires my day-to-day teaching practices and my therapeutic work across borders.

Besides teaching, I also work in private practice as an intercultural counsellor and psychotherapist. My client work is mostly online, with adults based all over the world. In my therapeutic work, I use Italian (my first language) or English (my second language), sometimes both, depending on clients’ needs. They reach to me often because of my main areas of specialisation, these are: Intercultural Psychotherapy, Academic Counselling, Focusing-Oriented Therapy and Pet-owner Counselling. They find that I can be of great help when feeling unsettled or uneasy because of a loss (be it physical or symbolic) and when trying to adjust to a new academic and cultural reality. Indeed, my therapeutic approach combines a relational work between internal and external worlds, including understanding how mind, emotions, and body work together to help regain wellbeing.

And finally, besides work, I do have another big passion: tennis! I simply love this sport and I take all opportunities, to practice it or to follow it in my free time.

Warwick University just seems to me the perfect place where to experience all this, being such a lively, enriching, and multicultural environment.

About the author

Dr Sonia Gallucci works as a Teaching Fellow in Counselling and Psychotherapy programmes in the Centre for Lifelong Learning.