About PEMworks™

MISSION

Founded by Dr. Dana Shai, Ph.D., PEMworks™ promotes positive child development through the facilitation of clinical assessment and intervention programs supported by the scientific study of parental embodied mentalizing - the full-body movement and dynamic nonverbal relationship between parents and their children. 

PEMworks™ strives to create professional networks to advance the wellbeing of children and their families.

Vision

We believe that early intervention based on the interactive nonverbal process between parents and their infants can serve as a kind, non-judgmental, and empathic route that can facilitate the repair of interpersonal difficulties and guide the infant to a healthier and more optimal developmental trajectory for many years to come.

Commitment

We are passionate and focused on disseminating our knowledge and methodology to a diverse global audience through a wide range of unique training and consultation services delivered by highly trained PEMworks™ researchers and clinicians.

We are committed to contributing to high-quality empirical research and clinical assessment, and interventions across populations. We welcome collaborations with researchers and practitioners, and we offer consultations, supervision and reflective practice.

For full details of our professional programs and training, please click below.

PEMworks™ Team

PEMworks is a spirited team of international academic researchers, psychologists, and infant mental health providers.

Dana shai, Ph.d. / FoundER / CEO

Dana Shai, Ph.D., psychologist, is a faculty member at the Academic College Tel Aviv Yaffo, Israel, and the director of the Study of Early Emotional Development (SEED) Center and Lab. Dr. Shai developed the Parental Embodied Mentalizing (PEM) coding system and assessment and has been leading world-wide collaborative research and delivers international talks and training programs on PEM for the last decade. Dr. Shai is interested in early interpersonal development, with particular interest in nonverbal interactive processes and parental embodied mentalizing (PEM). Dr. Shai also studies parenting, the transition to parenthood, coparental relationships and the child’s early social and emotional development within the family matrix. Dr. Shai completed her PhD in Psychology in 2011 at the University of London under the supervision of Profs. Jay Belsky and Peter Fonagy, and has a background in psychoanalytic developmental psychology, Dance Movement Therapy, and Philosophy.

ROSE SPENCER, PSYCH D /  DIRECTOR OF TRAINING & COMPLIANCE

Dr Spencer is a Psychologist based in London. She has over a decade of experience of working as a clinician in the National Health Service and private settings. Dr Spencer is a perinatal psychologist working with parents with mental health illness and their infants in the community and in a psychiatric mother and baby inpatient unit. Dr Spencer has a specialist interest in attachment and perinatal mental health and working with families therapeutically to enhance the emotional wellbeing of parents and infants. She has been working alongside Dr. Shai for over ten years and is a reliable PEM and PEMA™ coder, trainer and supervisor. Dr Spencer uses PEM and PEMA™ in both her research and clinical work. As part of her doctoral thesis, Dr Spencer was supervised by Professor Fonagy, Dr. Shai and Tobias Nolte, MD, and studied the processes of change in implicit and explicit mentalizing during psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy.

BRONWYN TALBOT, LMFT/ LEAD TRAINER & PROGRAM DEVELOPER

Bronwyn is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME) and registered Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist (® RCST) in the state of California with a concentration on parent-infant psychotherapy and child development. Bronwyn has worked in community mental health for over fifteen years; she has an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing psychodynamic, trauma-focused, developmental, somatic and therapeutic art practices that focus on the lifelong significance of early relationships. With the understanding that movement is a permeating means of early parent-infant communication, in her role as Lead Trainer and Program Developer at PEMworks™, Bronwyn trains professionals in the practice of identifying and facilitating the dynamic non-verbal relationship between parent and infant. Additionally, as an Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health specialist (IFECMH) and a Reflective Practice Facilitator II (RPF II) endorsed by the CA Center for Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health, Bronwyn collaborates with multidisciplinary professionals and organizations to employ reflective practice as a means to deepen this holistic understanding of the parent-child relationship and strengthen effectiveness in systems of care. 

EINAV AKEK, PH.D. CANDIDATE / TECHNICAL DIRECTOR AND ISRAEL PEM TRAINER

Einav Afek, is a Dance Movement Therapist based in Israel. She has clinical experience both in working individually and in groups with holocaust survivors, children of refugees and trauma survivors who have suffered neglect and abuse, and children on the autistic spectrum. Currently, Einav is a doctoral researcher at the School of Creative Arts Therapies, Haifa University, supervised by Prof Rachel Lev-Wiesel, Dr. Dita Federman and Dr. Dana Shai. Einav’s research focusses on PEM to examine the unconscious mechanisms that occur between a parent and infant, which are influenced by the spousal relationship and affect the children’s emotional development. She is also a reliable PEM and PEMA™ coder. Einav’s areas of interest are ‫ mentalization and parent - child non-verbal communication, family dynamics, dance movement therapy interventions and movement analysis.