Celestin Mutuyimana
Early-Career Fellow 2023–2024

Celestin Mutuyimana is a psychotherapist, filmmaker, trainer, mentor, and researcher with over ten years of experience at both a national and an international level. He decided to become a psychotherapist because he grew up in Rwanda, a country where many people suffer from trauma-related disorders while receiving little to no professional help. Therefore, he founded the Baho Smile Institute (BSI) in 2019, a psychotherapeutic and research center in Rwanda, whose main goal is to help people become aware of their mental disorders and get professional help through the leading objective of the “restoration of Ubuntu in traumatized population.”

Together with film scientists, he also produces short movies with the aim of touching emotions, breaking the silence, and searching for treatment for mental disorders. He is furthermore working with a multidisciplinary team of cultural-clinical psychologists from East Africa, Switzerland, China, and Georgia to explore culturally–specific trauma–related symptoms. Currently, he is an early-career fellow at the Collegium Helveticum and an honorary fellow at the University of Zurich’s Department of Psychology. His research interests include trauma–related disorders and the development of culturally sensitive interventions.