Dr Peter Bray, PhD, M.Ed. (Hons) Counselling, MNZAC

Peter is currently Dean of Research at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, in Tauranga, New Zealand. In addition, he runs a small counselling and supervision practice, and is an editor of the New Zealand Journal of Counselling.

Prior to his current appointment, Peter was Programme Director for the Master of Counselling degree programme at the University of Auckland, and has served as an Associate Professor at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke's Bay, in Aotearoa New Zealand. He has also been a School Counsellor and the Director of Student Services at Mangere College in South Auckland. Earlier in his career he was a Counsellor and  taught Drama and English in the United Kingdom.

Since completing his PhD in 2005 on the dynamic confluence of traumatic grief and spiritual experience in adolescent bereavement, his professional work as an educator and his scholarship have been dedicated to counsellor training and practice in New Zealand. Significantly, his international publications continue to reflect upon the part that psycho-spiritual experience can play in the personal and professional lives of individuals and contribute to processes of post-traumatic growth and personal transformation in those who face distressing life events.

Peter has edited eight books and published a number of chapters and international research articles that delineate the key areas of his broad professional interests. These include work on trauma, grief and loss, counselling practice and adolescents, the therapeutic relationship, the value of spiritual experience in post-traumatic growth processes, and more recently the notion that professional ‘wounded healers’ such as counsellors and social workers, might also be viewed as ‘heroic’ healers.