Vito Flaker, Ph.D., Professor

Vito Flaker, Ph.D., Professor

Vito Flaker, Ph.D., Professor

Vito Flaker is a project assistant of the institute for projects of social nature. He is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Work in Ljubljana where he heads the Chair of Community Mental Health. He was elected Dean of this faculty form 2001 to 2007. As a visiting professor he used to cooperate with the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, London School of Economics, Anglia University in Cambridge, University of Sarajevo, University of Banja Luka and Moghyla Academy in Kiev. He is the Course director of Theories and Methodologies of Social Work at the Inter-University Centre for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik. In addition to academic and educational work, he was a research manager on a national as well as international level, he was in charge of workshops, seminars, courses and lectures for professional and volunteer workers in the field of social work, drugs and mental health. He was part of the NERUDA network (European Network for Research and Drugs Addictions) under UNICA (Universities form the Capitals of Europe).  He was a member of a scientific council at the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction (EMCDDA) in Lisbon. He was involved in many international projects related to social work, mental health services, deinstitutionalisation and reduction of drug related harm (in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Ukraine, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Croatia and elsewhere). His engagement does not stop here because he is committed to practical and research work, he is also a member in various editorial boards and scientific councils. He has been active as a volunteer, co-organiser, teacher, researcher, adviser and head of many volunteer organisations. He continues to be involved in many of them even today. He is a co-founder and a long-serving president of the Committee for Social Protection of Madness, later Altra, a co-founder of the self-help organisation on drugs and AIDS Stigma and a co-founder and president of the Federation for Promotion of Mental Health Alpe Jadran. As an activist he was one of the initiators of IZ-hod, Direct social work and Meduza. His most active areas of action have to do with issues of mental health and deinstitutionalisation. As far as drug use is concerned he was one of the initiators of reducing drug related harm, ethnographic research and the protection of drug users' rights. He is the author of the phenomenon of drug use - Živeti s heroinom 1. in 2. del (the life with heroin). His bibliography is extensive. He received the National lifetime achievement award in the sphere of social protection in 2010.

Vito Flaker's cooperation with the institute is project-based and concerns social issues regarding the use of cannabis. He supports the idea that inadequate legislative framework, most of all criminalization and limitations of human rights cause many-sided problems of a widespread nature. Concerned about a human as an individual and mature society as a whole, he strives for finding an optimum regulation of the matters in question and is, as an expert and lecturer in this area, often invited to several panel discussions, symposia etc.

Vito Flaker was trained and qualified for humanistic psychotherapy and neo-reichian methods in teamwork in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and in Slovenia. He concluded his undergraduate study at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana. He successfully concluded his doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana.