Manivong Ratts delivers keynote at international counseling conference

Manivong Ratts, professor of counseling and chair of the Leadership and Professional Studies Department in the College of Education, was keynote speaker at the Let the Voices be Heard! conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The international conference was jointly planned by the American Counseling Association (ACA), the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the Irish Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (IACP). 

One of the nation’s leading scholars in the area of social justice counseling, Ratts coined the term “social justice counseling” and argued that social justice is a “fifth force” among counseling paradigms, following the psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic, and multicultural traditions. 

Ratts has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Counseling and Development and the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology. He has published in various peer reviewed journals on social justice counseling and is lead author of the books Counseling for Multiculturalism and Social Justice: Integration, Theory, and Application (2014) and ACA Advocacy Competencies: A Social Justice Framework for Counselors (2010). 

Founded in 1952, ACA is the world’s largest association exclusively representing professional counselors in various practice settings.