Professor Robert (Bob) S. McKelvey will be hosted by Professor Sabine Lee and is visiting the University of Birmingham 26 October-5 November 2015 and then returning in Spring 2017.
During his fellowship Professor McKelvey will be working closely with Professor Lee to develop the study of the history of wartime gender-based violence and children born of war.
Obtaining his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1966 Professor McKelvey then graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1974. He completed his general psychiatry training at the Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1977 and his child and adolescent psychiatry training at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts in 1979. He is board-certified in Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
He is especially interested in the care of persons from other cultural traditions, an outgrowth of many years of clinical and research involvement with refugees from Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam. Prior to entering medicine, he served as a Captain in the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and it was that experience that stimulated his interest in both medicine and cross-cultural psychiatry.
He has written two books based on his personal experiences as U.S. Marine Corps civil affairs officer during the Vietnam War: The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam and A Gift of Barbed Wire: America's Allies Abandoned in South Vietnam.
Professor McKelvey also has a strong interest in youth suicide prevention and has received a grant to develop a training program in the diagnosis and treatment of adolescent depression and suicide in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics.
Please do contact Professor Lee or Sue Gilligan if you’d like to meet Bob whilst he is in Birmingham.