The Healer
Prof. Nyamal Tutdeal is a South Sudanese-Ethiopian-American Healer, Liberation Architect, and Decolonial Somatic Practitioner whose work spans the Africa and the diaspora, the United States, and the African diaspora.
Her practice is rooted in Indigenous knowing rather than Western clinical models, centering nervous system regulation and ancestral grounding so that individuals and collectives can stay regulated and expansive while moving through structural and historical pain.
Her published research, Trauma-Associated Psychiatric Disorders Among South Sudanese Dinka & Nuer Women Resettled in the USA (Global Social Welfare, 2020), centers refugee mental health experiences largely invisible in mainstream clinical research. She holds a Certificate in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard Medical School (2024).
She serves as Adjunct Professor at Arcadia University and Webster University Ghana, teaching Introduction to Human Rights, Refugee and Migration Movement, and Advocacy, NGO and Civil Society, as well as Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice, Mediation, and Conflict Coaching in Arcadia’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution program.
As Founder and Director of Matkɛl, she has built healing ecosystems across East and West Africa and the diaspora, holding grief, political trauma, and intergenerational wound within frameworks of collective care and liberation.
She holds a B.A. in Human Relations and an M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, and she does not approach this work from a distance. She has lived its context.
She has spoken at the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum. She has contributed policy guidance to the White House. She founded Matkɛl, co-founded the NyaEden Foundation, serves as Healer-In-Chief at The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice, and teaches Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice, and Mediation as Adjunct Professor at Arcadia University.
Her published research on trauma-associated psychiatric disorders among South Sudanese Dinka and Nuer women resettled in the United States (Global Social Welfare, 2020) and her Certificate in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard Medical School (2024) ground her practice in both scholarly rigor and lived proximity.
She was a refugee child in South Dakota who did not know what she would become.