Dignity Letter — Summer 2026 | | |
Dear Friend,
The Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) community strives every day to stand up for dignity and build communities of courage.
Our strength stems from all of you and our shared commitment to peace through dignity — recognizing and appreciating the dignity of all people and the planet we share.
We hope this edition of the Dignity Letter inspires and energizes your efforts!
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Contents
Upcoming Opportunities to Connect
Dignity News and New Developments!
- New Video! How to Use the New Dignity Database — References for Research and Action
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Celebrating the Launch of a New Book on Global Citizen Education
- A New Publication: The Devaluation and Humiliation Among Dalits in India
- New Book on Trauma and Humiliation: Auf der Suche nach dem Licht der Dunkelheit
- Emerging Research: Humiliation Impacting Married Pakistani Women's Identity and Self-Worth
Dignity Press — First Audiobook!
| | 2026 Dignity Conference in Hamburg, Germany | | |
44th Annual Conference of
Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies
Maintaining Human Dignity in the Midst of Crises
Hamburg, Germany
with a Public Event online
25th August 2026: Public Event, 12:30–17:15 German time (hybrid)
26th – 28th August 2026: Dignity Workshop, 9:30–16:30 (in person attendees)
(including excursions to interesting places in Hamburg)
This Dignity Conference convenes in Hamburg, Germany and will be linked to the annual summer school of the trans-disciplinary "Peace Education/Peacebuilding" initiative at the University of Hamburg. Both teachers and students from the university will partake in the conference.
In the summer semester of 2026, immediately before the conference, students enrolled in the Peace Education/Peacebuilding curriculum will create stories or other arts-based activities that address the constructive overcoming of humiliating experiences in childhood and adolescence. These students will present their findings to other conference participants in the usual Open Space format, which we refer to as Dignity Dialogues or Dignilogues.
Please visit the conference webpage regularly for the latest information
as plans for this event are unfolding.
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Registration Closes
Friday, 23rd August 2026
Whether you join us in person (seating is limited), online, or in spirit, your kind support is invaluable!
We look forward to welcoming you!
Please know that you are invited to spend the entire conference with us, so that true dignity-family-building can emerge!
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| | | | Welcome to Our Annual Dignity Workshop in New York | | |
2026 Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and
Violent Conflict
Friday, December 4th, 2026
11:00 am – 4:00 p.m. New York time
(Online and in person)
Columbia University, Teachers College
525 West 120th Street,
New York, NY 10027
Our Warmest Welcome!
This workshop invites you to join us for special presentations and collaborative interactive sessions — Dignilogues (Dignity + Dialogue). We will explore strategies to transform cycles of humiliation into opportunities for reconciliation and healing, thus helping to nurture communities of courage in both personal and global contexts.
Workshop: Friday, December 4th, 2026 (online and in person at Columbia University)
In-Person Attendees: Doors open at 9:00 a.m.
Venue: Columbia University, Teachers College (TC), 525 West 120th Street, New York City, NY 10027, subway 1, exit 116th Street
Please remember to bring your ID when you attend.
Zoom Attendees: Doors open at 10:45 a.m. (New York time)
The Workshop Begins: 11:00 a.m. (New York time)
Important: Please indicate your preference for attending in person (at Columbia University) or online when you register. Thank you!
We invite you to visit our workshop website for the latest details and
registration information for this event.
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We Look Forward to
Welcoming You!
You are invited to spend the entire workshop with us, so that true dignity-family-building can emerge!
Registration Closes
Monday, November 30th, 2026
Whether you join us in person (seating is limited), online, or in spirit, your kind support is invaluable! Registration is free.
| | | | | World Dignity University Initiative | | |
Great News!
Senior Project Leader Rebecca Tabaczynsk has created a brief video demonstrating how to easily and effectively use our Dignity Resources Database!
This downloadable database documents references to books, chapters, articles, papers, presentations, or other resources authored, co-authored, or initiated by members of our Global Advisory Board, scholars and researchers in our community, and many others.
Thanks to Becky's remarkable efforts, the database includes over 9,000 entries and continues to grow!
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HumanDHS and the World Dignity University initiative (WDUi) is committed to maintaining this database to support educators, scholars, researchers, and other collaborators on topics related to advancing dignity, ending cycles of humiliation, and working for peace and dignity.
If you have feedback about this project or resources to share,
please email Becky Tabaczynski: beckytaba@humiliationstudies.org
| | | Dignity News and New Developments | | |
Celebrating the Launch of a New Book on "Global Citizenship Education"
Congratulations to Editor Dr. Emiliano Bosio
This book is a global conversation that brings together leading scholars and practitioners — including Betty Leask, Patrick Paul Walsh, Giorgio Marinoni, Savo Heleta, Elisa Guerra, Linda Hartling, Evelin Lindner, Paul R. Carr, and Gina Thésée — to explore how Global Citizenship Education can cultivate ethical values, foster social justice, democracy, sustainability, dignity, inclusion, and equity, and promote critical and transformative pedagogies in an interconnected yet unequal Planet. Please see the video here...
Dr. Bosio has been interviewing distinguished researchers and educators around the world to examine the critical challenges and potential benefits of fostering global citizenship education through mutual learning and dignifying dialogue. The series has now surpassed 60,000 subscribers! Please view many inspirational interviews here...
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New Publication!
"Devaluation, Power, and Resistance: The Experience of Humiliation Among Dalits in India"
Yashpal Jogdand and Steve Reicher
The paper draws on qualitative interviews with Dalit participants to examine the experience of humiliation and its relationship to identity, power, and resistance. It suggests that humiliation is rooted in the tension between devaluation and powerlessness, that it depends on the development of a valued sense of self, and that responses to humiliation are strategic and shaped by possibilities for collective resistance. Published in Political Psychology, July 2026. Please read more...
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New Book in German!
Auf der Suche nach dem Licht der Dunkelheit
(Translation: In Search of the Light of Darkness)
Stefanie Dinkelbach
This book is divided into three parts. The first part draws on findings from psychology, neurobiology, psychotherapy, and sociology to provide an understanding of trauma. It clarifies how traumatic experiences in individual lives, and trauma-like events in social and societal contexts, can cause loss of emotional connections, thus increasing the risk of violence.
Please read more...
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Emerging Research...
How Repeated Interpersonal Humiliation Impacts Married Pakistani Women's Identity and Self-Worth
Alsihba Abid, Supervised by Mansoor Ahmed
Department of Psychology University of Central Punjab
This study adds to the existing and sparse qualitative research literature on humiliation by offering a culturally sensitive perspective on how repeated interpersonal humiliation impacts married Pakistani women's identity and self-worth. These results also underscore the urgent need to promote awareness of emotional humiliation in families and provide culturally-appropriate psychological support and intervention services aimed at improving women´s dignity, identification and mental health. Please read more...
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We are always delighted to learn about dignity news, even when we can't include everything in this Dignity Letter. If you would like to share your news — positive progress, courageous action, promising practices, new publications, and the like — we warmly invite you to send it to our attention:
humandhs@humiliationstudies.org
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Dignity Press – First Audiobook!
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A New Book!
Vulnerability Protected:
Visions of a
Dancing Mind
By Carol Smaldino
Vulnerability Protected: Visions of a Dancing Mind invites readers to reconsider what it truly means to be vulnerable — and why it matters now more than ever. Vulnerability, writes Carol Smaldino, is not a soft cliché but a profound state of openness that touches every part of our being. It is rarely smooth or easy. On the contrary, genuine vulnerability depends on a sense of safety, both physical and emotional, and becomes a gateway to repair and reconnection when we inevitably falter.
In this new work, Carol Smaldino explores how vulnerability is a central ingredient in empathy — for ourselves, for each other, and even for the natural world. When we allow ourselves to feel deeply into our own experience, we become more able to extend that same depth of understanding outward, bridging the gaps that so often divide us.
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Carol Smaldino, LCSW, is a psychotherapist with forty years of experience working with individuals, couples, families, and groups. She has been a long-term friend and contributor to HumanDHS Dignity Workshops.
This new publication is available through Dignity Press, as well as many other distributors:
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This audiobook is available through many distributors. It can also be ordered from Dignity Press below. | | | |
DigniFunding: Thanks To All of Our Sharegivers!
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We are deeply grateful to all who generously sustain HumanDHS through action gifts and economic support!
HumanDHS does not have a paid staff, administrative assistance, or IT services. We are an "extreme, lean, green, but not mean" community, essentially a "do-it-together-with-dignity" community. We do not charge registration fees for events, yet we appreciate thoughtful contributions (according to one's ability).
If you would like to contribute, we warmly welcome your kind support:
| | | | Wishing You a World of Dignity! | | | |  | |
Evelin Lindner, MD, PhDs, Founding President
Linda Hartling, PhD, Director
Uli Spalthoff, PhD, Director of Project Development and Systems Administration
Michael Britton, EdD, PhD, Board Member
Richard Slaven, PhD, Director of Dignifunding
Jane Hilken, MA, Publication Advisor
Fatma Tufan, Senior Partner and Advisor
Rebecca Tabaczynski, Senior Project Leader
HumanDHS Board of Directors
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