Federica Cavazzoni

• Doctor of Psychology
• Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

This study analyzes the multifaceted violence experienced by women during armed conflict through an intersectional framework, focusing on the compounded vulnerabilities arising from overlapping identities such as age, marital status, economic background, and caregiving roles. Using narratives of Gazan refugee women displaced during the recent confl...

Particularly in recent years, interest in decolonizing knowledge production is increasing considerably. Debates have raised within various academic disciplines on the role of the researcher's positionality in the research and knowledge production process. Reflexivity and positionality have become keywords within feminist and anti-oppressive researc...

We sought to examine the changes over time regarding children’s agency, life satisfaction, hope, psychological problems, trauma symptoms and potentially traumatic events in areas where warfare, military presence and settler-colonial violence are affecting children’s lives. 965 Palestinian children, 494 males and 471 females, were assessed with the...

Percorso di Video Partecipativo: Sei tornata/o in Puglia e lavori da remoto? L’Università di Milano - Bicocca, in collaborazione con Zalab e Sinapsi Produzioni Partecipate, propone un percorso laboratoriale (gratuito), sotto la supervisione di un team di registi professionisti, in cui imparare le basi del video making e realizzare un video parteci...

With the pandemic, working (very) remotely, from another region or another country, has become more common. For many people, this working modality is enabling them to return to live or travel more often to areas that were left behind, particularly in regions of Southern Italy. Through participatory video making, interviews and secondary data analys...

Traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to trauma symptoms and impaired mental health, especially when children are exposed to war and political violence. Despite significant attention to child's exposure to traumas, few instruments to detect potentially traumatic events have been validated psychometrically. Our study aimed to develop, adapt an...

Background: children affected by war and political violence deploy agentic competencies to cope with trauma symptoms and psychological difficulties. however, it does not always act as a protective factor to help them adjust to potentially traumatic events. Aims: We expected to explore the association between agency, trauma symptoms and psychologica...

Aim Two years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, extensive research has documented its profound impact on the quality of life and mental health of millions of people worldwide. However, there remains a need to explore the relationships between people’s mental health, their fear of Covid-19, and vaccine hesitancy, as well as their impact on p...

Background: Children exposed political violence deploy resources to maintain functioning, hope and life satisfaction. Objective: We sought to explore whether or not children promote hope and life satisfaction trough agency, psychological difficulties, potentially traumatic experiences and symptoms in Palestine. Participants and setting: 965 childre...

To date, many studies have documented the devastating impact of the Israeli military occupation in Palestine, which deprives Palestinians of all basic and human rights. Yet, the interlocking oppressions that characterize the Israeli occupation-as those of other colonial systems-are mostly overlooked, with little attention being devoted in mainstrea...

Aim Covid-19 pandemic and its relative containment measures have affected populations' quality of life and psychological well-being worldwide. The fear related to the pandemic and the imposed containment measures has acted as a trigger causing a global increase in negative mental health states. Thus, we aimed to explore the relationship between fea...

The ongoing occupation in Palestine involves structural colonial oppression over the native population, depriving Palestinians of fundamental human rights. The set of political, social, economic, and environmental factors that result from the occupation has a lasting direct and indirect effect on the well-being of the children exposed to systematic...

Background: Bedouin children living in occupied Palestinian territory are at risk of developing trauma-related pathologies because of chronic exposure to political and military violence. Little is known about psychological wellbeing and life satisfaction in this group of children, or their coping skills and survival skills in adjusting to these co...

Background: In the mainstream literature, children exposed to political violence and armed conflicts are conventionally viewed as a vulnerable group, but we believe their coping abilities, survival skills, and agency are overlooked and underestimated. In this study, we challenged this traditional view by conceptualising agency as children's capaci...

The coronavirus pandemic has been sweeping the world for more than a year. As physical health begins to stabilize in the western world, an increasing concern is related to the impact of the virus and its containment measures on people's mental health. This work aimed to explore the effect of demographic factors (age, gender, level of education , an...

This study sought to qualitatively explore dimensions of human insecurity and their effect on the quality of life as an antecedent of general well-being and mental health among a group of young internally displaced people (IDPs) living in refugee camps in the region of Diffa, Niger. Thirty-six IDPs (56% female, 44% male; M Age = 15; SD = 1.96) took...

Our present study sought to qualitative explore the perceptions of experts on the meaning of children agency in a context characterized by ongoing colonial violence and structural racism. Namely, we explored culture and context-specific features of agency, experts' perceptions about a decolonized definition, and gaps with the mainstream definition...

Background Children and youth growing up in contexts characterized by political violence are at high risk of developing mental health impairments. In recent years, a growing interest has been directed to the study of children’s well-being after being exposed to political violence in order to develop interventions aimed at preserving and enhancing i...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global crisis, necessitating an investigation of its effects from a mental health and wellbeing perspective. In Italy within a few weeks of detecting the first case of coronavirus (February 20, 2020), the country imposed a nationwide quarantine to reduce transmission of the virus disrupting people's da...

In the present article, we aimed at construing a new quantitative measure of children's agency in Palestine. Within a socio-ecological and culturally and contextually informed perspective, the study introduces the development of a new instrument to investigate and evaluate children's agentic practices within their living contexts and their daily li...

Background: Research has widely documented how, even in conditions of extreme poverty, deprivation, or oppression, children are competent and situated actors, capable of actively mobilizing internal, external, or social resources to protect themselves from their environments and safeguard their everyday lives. Yet, the ways in which their agency mi...

Introduction: Research has widely evidenced the effects of war and political violence on the functioning of children, with a great accord in diagnosing children's psychological burdens related to their exposure to violence. Yet, within this literature, the influence of the chronic sense of insecurity on their psychological functioning during and a...

The importance and centrality of the construct of agency is wellknown amongst social scientists. Yet, there is still little agreement on how this construct should be understood and defined, as demonstrated by the diversity of instruments that are used to investigate it. Indeed, there is no current consensus or standardized methodology to assess age...

Our research challenges the picture of children exposed to political violence as helpless victims, portraying them as active agents who mobilize resources both within themselves and their social, physical, political world. Based on drawings and walk-along interviews with 70 Palestinian children, the present study provides an analysis of children's...

Background: Professional helpers working in adverse circumstances are at risk of developing psychosocial stress and signs of primary and secondary trauma (eg, anxiety and hyperarousal). We used modelling to investigate whether and to what extent personal resources (ie, post-traumatic growth, sense of coherence, and wellbeing) of Palestinian helper...

Background: In Palestine, the ongoing Israeli occupation shapes and endangers all spaces that are used by children in their everyday lives. In this study, Palestinian children were considered active agents in their lives, both affecting and being affected by the world around them. Our research aimed to explore the role of resources, competencies,...

In the present article, we aimed at construing a new quantitative measure of children's agency in Palestine. Within a socio-ecological and culturally and contextually informed perspective, the study introduces the development of a new instrument to investigate and evaluate children's agentic practices within their living contexts and their daily li...

This exploratory study assessed the association between agency and life satisfaction, as well as the potential for life satisfaction, in its turn, to alleviate trauma symptoms and reduce negative emotion in a group of children exposed to war and military violence in Palestine. Two hundred and fifty Palestinian children, who had been recruited at pr...

Through a mixed-method design, the study investigated gender and context differences within the domains of agency, life satisfaction, affectivity, and symptoms of trauma. Two-hundred-fifty Palestinian children from cities, villages, and refugee camps (M = 11.58, SD = 1.49) completed four self-reported measures, Multilevel Student’s Life Satisfactio...

Background: It has been revealed that the construct of agency plays a crucial role in contributing to children's positive functioning and well-being despite their traumatic contexts. Yet there is little agreement within the literature about the definition of agency, how agency is displayed by children, or how it should be investigated. Aims: Thi...

p>Over the last two decades the concept of agency has played a pivotal role in childhood studies, bringing a radical shift into the old views of children and childhood development. However, little agreement has been reached on what exactly agency means, how it should be measured, especially amongst children affected by military violence and oppress...

Responding to the need for more information concerning the mental health and psychological well-being of women living amid political oppression and war, this study aimed to explore specific factors that contribute to women's individual and collective perceptions about war and the associated traumatic life events that occurred during their lives. Mo...

Research has widely documented the effects of war and political violence on the functioning and well-being of children. Yet, children's agency in the face of political violence remains underexplored. The present study aimed at exploring the sources of spatial agency that children draw on to counteract the harmful consequences of ongoing exposure to...

Research has widely documented the effects of war and political violence on the functioning and well-being of adults and children. Yet, within this literature, women’s agency in the face of war-related adversity and political violence remains underexplored. The present study was conducted in the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the most recent war on...

Bedouin children in Palestine are at risk of developing trauma-related pathologies as a result of chronic exposure to severe political and military violence. Little is known about their coping abilities and survival skills. The aim of our study was to longitudinally test the contribution of agency to predicting life satisfaction and the power of li...

Adopting an ecological perspective on children’s functioning and psychological well-being, we investigated the association between agency and life satisfaction, and its bearing on trauma symptoms and negative emotions in a group of Bedouin children living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Specifically, we hypothesized that the more children...

In light of critical psychology and socio-con-structionist theories, the present work aims at analyzing attitudes of political agency, psychological adjustment to trauma, and resistance, as protective factors against political violence in 122 children living in refugee camps in Palestine: Aida and Dheisheh camps in the West Bank and Jabalia camp on...

Background In light of critical and socioconstructionist theories, the aim of our research was to analyze source of agency, psychological adjustment to trauma as protective factors against political violence in children living in three different refugee camps in Palestine, as well as exploring the risks to which these children are exposed. Methods...

This essay wants to underline the importance of images as a tool to access traumatic memories of refugees. The authors propose a narrative technique (post-traumatic intervention model) using the power of images and their potentialities. Arrivals’ images facilitate the chance to recall, narrate, accept, understand and hold complex and painful storie...

Sommario Partendo da una cornice teorica sistemica e socio-ecologica, gli autori propongono un modello di intervento sul trauma orientato alla comunità, per prevenire e contenere le reazioni traumatiche in contesti di violenza militare e politica. Viene presentato un intervento sviluppato nella Striscia di Gaza, con strumenti quali il teatro, la fi...