Valerie Ringland, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Valerie Ringland is an East Frisian-Jewish woman working as an Indigenous scientist and spiritual social worker. Her work bridges Indigenous and Western worlds, with a focus on facilitating healing related to trauma and social conflict. Her Western training includes a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Texas at Austin, a J.D. in law from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a B.A. in mathematics from Emory University, certifications in mediation and restorative justice, and her Indigenous training spans sacred circle-keeping, indigenous dance, ancestral healing, earthing, dreamwork, and sweat lodge, in addition to lived experiences. After over a decade of work in social research, policy and practice in Australia, the U.S., India, South Africa and Peru, Valerie founded Earth Ethos in 2018 to facilitate others to integrate Indigenous science into their research, organizations, social justice and healing practices. She is currently working on a project with an Aboriginal community-controlled organization in north-central Australia to use Indigenous and Western science to build an evidence base through the process of community-led design of new social-emotional well-being projects.