This paper focuses on the Black minority ethnic population (Black British, Black African, Black Caribbean) and uses the term BME in reference to this group. Only 6.2% of BME people access psychological intervention for common mental disorders. In provision of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) the diversity in global majority populations1 requires culturally specific informed and responsive approaches. The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme needs to be accountable, culturally congruent and strategic, to ensure accessibility and improve outcomes for BME people. According to the Mental Health Foundation (2019), a higher percentage of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic populations (BAME) are diagnosed with common, severe and complex mental health disorders. Despite the weight of literature on this, little has changed. The NHS Implementation Plan outlines trajectories for increased access and reduced attrition within mental health services, addressing inequalities for BAME populations.

Evidence-based guidance and audits for provision of culturally sensitive and adapted therapies are presented in the pioneering (IAPT) BAME Positive Practice Guide (PPG). However, there are no funding arrangements or formal integrated frameworks to support implementation. The COVID-19 global pandemic and the high-profile death of George Floyd tragically exposed and highlighted the consequences of systemic racism. Understanding of the importance of service and clinical anti-racist practice is imperative for CBT therapists. Implementation of the BAME PPG audit tool ensures review of race equity in access, engagement, adaptation and workforce within IAPT and other mental health services. This could transform lives.

Beginning in the early 1960s—and especially by the end of the decade—a large number of the ethnic Hmong people in Thailand aligned themselves with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). By the 1970s, most of the CPT's “liberated areas” were located in remote, mountainous areas populated by Hmong people. In this paper, I situate Hmong involvement in CPT through the literature related to the multi-ethnic connections being made through the organisation of armed groups and argue that Hmong involvement with the CPT was transnational, transcultural and gender-relations-transforming. The first Hmong Thai to join the CPT was recruited in neighbouring Laos. Other Hmong in Thailand heard about the CPT through radio broadcasts from Laos in Hmong language. Furthermore, many of the early CPT recruits travelled from their homes in Thailand for political and military instruction at a basic training centre called A-30, which was located somewhere in northern Laos near the border with China. There, most Hmong CPT recruits learned to speak, read and write central Thai language. Hmong CPT also started to meaningfully interact with other Thais, including those from northeastern and southern Thailand and Chinese Thais from Bangkok. Later, those deemed to have particular potential were sent to study in China or in Vietnam for specific military training. Some Hmong sent their children to study with the CPT; others went on their own. The Hmong also interacted with people from other communist movements in Southeast Asia.

The Department of Transcultural Psychiatry (TCH) of the Regional Institute for Mental Health Care (Riagg) Rijnmond, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, set up an outreaching program, the Rif-Project, in response to the need for adjusting mental health care services to a more diverse and mobile client population while containing costs. In the past, TCH observed a decline in mental health status in Moroccan clients following their stay in Morocco, which was linked to uncoordinated eclectic health care consumption in Morocco, the pursuit of personally more acceptable diagnoses, somatic checkups or medication, and the occasional use of (stress-inducing) traditional healing methods. Rif-Project is based on the assumption of providing continuation of care to its Moroccan clients who spend their summer months in Morocco, through strategic positioning of TCH care-deliverers across the kingdom. Their activities include the continuation of the treatment program that was initiated in the Netherlands, visiting clients in their preferred environment and system, psycho-education and preventive activities. By monitoring their clients health care consumption, coordinating services in collaboration with local institutions, treatment interventions and psycho-education, TCH-workers were successful in providing and maintaining stability to their clients, which reduced the incidence of deterioration and crisis.

Comics are an increasingly popular medium in the twenty-first century. Combining words and images, comics enable the expression of individual and collective histories that straddle languages and cultures, reflecting the multimodality of the cognitive and narrative processes in a multilingual, globalising world. This article proposes an original framework to understand the power of comics as a transcultural medium by exploring the production of Takoua Ben Mohamed, a graphic journalist and comics author born in Tunisia and raised in Rome. These comics visualise histories of migration and translation in Italy and the Mediterranean, questioning notions of homogeneity, authenticity and canonicity of Italian memory and culture. The article engages with the theoretical and methodological framework of the Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML) research project, exploring the interconnected linguistic and cultural dimensions of memory and translation. The analysis identifies a series of processes termed mediation-translation in Ben Mohamed's comics, which illuminate the constitutive nature of memory and translation in contemporary processes of identification.

This article explores the practical, ethical, and epistemological issues which arise when carrying out and sharing research in contexts of Italian migration, highlighting how greater reflexivity on our own geographic and historical location as researchers can productively inform and shape our understanding of sites of contact, exchange and confrontation in relation to contemporary Italy. Specifically, we write as researchers informed by ethnographic theories and practices, and who through our research have engaged in emplaced and embodied cultural encounters in sites which are identifiable as both transcultural and Italian. Drawing on vignettes from research in Italy and the UK, the article highlights some of the particular contradictions, opportunities and responsibilities generated by our respective positions. We address how our positionings as white, English and female scholars located within nationally-defined Italian Studies structures have raised pertinent questions of power, privilege and voice, as we place our own biographies and bodies, themselves shaped by specific colonial, national and local histories, into critical dialogue with those on and with whom we research. Through a discussion of these ‘irresolvable tensions’ of our research, we seek to practically engage with the broader imperative of finding new ways of studying and writing culture.

Relations between Italy and other countries – such as China – are often imagined within a binary frame that essentialises national and ethnic communities and fails to recognise the complex transcultural ramifications of an increasingly globalising world. This is particularly problematic when studying those social and cultural spaces that Ilaria Vanni (2016) has described as transcultural edges. These are marginal spaces of transition and encounters between different cultures and societies, which have the potential to create new, innovative and productive ecosystems. We argue that one such space is Prato, an industrial town near Florence, well known for its textile district, and host to one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe. Significant academic attention has been devoted to the Chinese community in Prato, including studies of its social and economic impact on the host local community and the textile industry. Most of these studies tend to isolate the Chinese community from the ethnic complexity of the area, within a binary frame that fails to acknowledge the large presence of other migrant groups and the reciprocal permeability and transculturation between the Chinese community, the Italian community, and other ethnic groups. As part of a larger project, a group of scholars is currently digitally remapping Prato, to include quantitative and qualitative geolocalised information collected through a multidisciplinary method that includes ethnography, media analysis, translation studies, transcultural studies, and digital participatory action research. Through a brief description of the aims and characteristics of this research project, the paper will discuss the importance of rethinking the relationship between Italy and China, and between Italians and Chinese, within a more complex and nuanced transcultural frame.

This study presents a transcultural mapping of department stores in modern East Asia from a socio-political perspective centered on colonialism and nationalism. Department stores in the region exhibited a coeval culture, as suggested by the common use of the term “hyakka/baihuo/baekhwa.” While focusing on the common impact of Japanese colonialism, this study examines mainly Mitsukoshi in Tokyo; Wing On and Sincere in Shanghai; and Mitsukoshi, Minakai, and Hwashin in Seoul. It consists of four parts. The first part traces the translingual-scape of “hyakka” and shows how the modern universalism celebrated in the term, in reality, contributed to shaping an exclusive social group. The second part expands the etymological survey of “hyakka” into the physical dimension and analyzes items for sale at department stores, select lifestyles, and social group formations. The third part illuminates the patriarchal, militaristic managerial styles that developed under the influence of Japanese imperialism. The last part delves into Japanese department stores' colonial expansion within East Asia. This study employs a transcultural methodology to highlight multidimensional connections and coeval localities as well as differences, though it is often differences that are highlighted by research that involves straightforward country comparisons.