Conflict, Power, & Dialogue: Faculty & Staff Lunch Series

The Space Between Us: Practical Skills for Difficult Conversations in Academic Life

Registration coming soon.

In a large research university, collaboration across disciplines, competing priorities, and high-stakes professional relationships can make difficult conversations unavoidable. How we navigate these moments can shape not only our working relationships, but also the culture of our departments, research teams, and academic communities.

The Space Between Us is a highly interactive workshop designed for faculty who want to navigate disagreement more effectively, provide direct and constructive feedback, and build stronger professional relationships across differences in perspective, status, and expertise.

Drawing on mindfulness, mediation, contemplative traditions, and conflict transformation, participants practice four essential skills: tuning inward to recognize their own reactions, observing without evaluation to separate facts from assumptions, expanding beyond positions to understand underlying needs and interests, and exploring conflict with curiosity rather than defensiveness.

Through practical exercises and realistic academic scenarios, faculty develop tools for listening across differences, addressing tension before it escalates, having challenging conversations with colleagues, and fostering trust and psychological safety in research teams and academic departments.

The goal is to help faculty approach difficult interactions with greater clarity, courage, and compassion—and transform moments of conflict into opportunities for dialogue, collaboration, and growth.

Lunch will be served. Registration required.

This series is a collaboration across The Ombuds Office, Hoos Well, FEAP, and the Contemplative Sciences Center.

About the Presenter  

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Henry Yampolsky, J.D. is an organizational ombudsman, internationally recognized conflict resolution expert, educator, lawyer, and a multi-time TEDx speaker. He is the author of Dis-Solving Conflict from Within: An Inner Path for Conflict Transformation. Henry is a part of the University of Virginia Ombuds Office and serves as the inaugural Ombuds for the University of Virginia Health.

Henry has taught and lectured around the world including at the New York Peace Institute, the International Gandhi Center in New Delhi, and Bellevue Mediation in Zurich. Henry has also served as faculty for Virginia Tech Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention; the Nelson Mandela Washington Fellowship at Drexel University; and for Mediators Beyond Borders International. Henry is the recipient of the Mediation Synergy Award from the Ukrainian Academy of Mediation and the Global Peace Champion Award from the UK-based Global Peace Let’s Talk Foundation. A licensed attorney in multiple states, Henry has been repeatedly recognized as a Super Lawyer Rising Star and was featured on CBS News and on WHYY (Philadelphia’s NPR Station).

Henry has also spent extensive time in India studying Yoga and the Vedanta Tradition. He is a passionate adventure motorcyclist who has twice crossed the Himalayas on a motorcycle. Henry has earned his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Temple University and also has a BS in International Studies from the University of Scranton. A native of Kyiv, Ukraine, he is fluent in Russian and Ukrainian.