Dr Irene Bruna Seu is Emerita Professor of Psychosocial Studies and Critical Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Researching and Embedding Human Rights (CREHR). She has also been practising as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for over 30 years. 

Bruna has published widely on psychosocial denial and acknowledgement following gross violations of human rights, both at the individual and societal level. Her work brings together psychological work on altruism, empathy and denial, as well as psychodynamic and discursive readings of emotional responses. Her further research interests include psychosocial approaches to human rights, conciliation and peace processes, humanitarianism, and public responses to humanitarian crises and psychology of peace mediation.

Her project SOMIC (States Of Mind In Conflict) is a psychosocial empirical research into how psychology can enhance peace mediation, for both practitioners on all tracks, and parties in conflict. She is currently developing some of SOMIC's recommendations on how to better equip and support peacebuilders through psychological and psychodynamic insights and techniques.