Dr. Malika Virah-Sawmy

As an activist, facilitator, researcher and in the past as a conservation manager, Malika has been engaged in social transformation within and at the fringes of institutions. Most of her creative force right now is in facilitation. She works on systems change, with companies, institutions such as the UN, NGOs, and with social movement such as Extinction Rebellion and Deep Adaptation Network. She integrates various state-of-the-art facilitation approaches enabling embodied, emotional, and cognitive intelligence. In other words, she uses practices such as storytelling, role plays and performances, constellations, and mindfulness to unpack the different layers beneath problems, behaviors, and mindsets. These different forms of practices can help support collective transformation processes and in this way achieve more purpose-driven decision-making and re-imagining futures. The insights she has gained in her facilitation work led Malika to ask deeper questions. How can we engage in collective transformation by also reflecting on ourselves in the system, especially the mindsets of scarcity, separation, measurement, and mistrust in life processes, that we have inherited and that we consciously or unconsciously perpetuate? At RIFS, she is engaged in research in environmental psychology and co-creative practices. Malika wants to understand the mindsets and psychological barriers we need to work with intelligently in times of climate change and ecological crisis. Her research also aims to create and assess experiences that help face and work with these barriers and mindsets.