We are a community of academics, artists, and activist working across different disciplines and sectors in Black health and the humanities.
Our network was formed to critically address issues related to racism in healthcare, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, which reinforced the disproportionate impact of healthcare crises in marginalised communities.
Our definition of Black refers to people of African and Afro-Caribbean heritage. However, our use of the term Black also recognises that while there is no biological basis for race, processes of racialisation have embodied consequences and shape interactions and outcomes for Black people in medical environments. We remain cognizant of the legacy of activism which has united Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and other people-of-colour in the resistance of British racism. Our network is comprised of members from all demographics who share a commitment to anti-racism in healthcare and health-related research environments.
From October 2020-September 2022, under the brilliant leadership of Principal Investigator, Dr Josie Gill, and Research Associate, Dr Amber Lascelles, based at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Black Humanities, the network ran a Wellcome Trust-funded training programme for its members. The programme offered a series of virtual workshops led by artists and activists, deploying formats as diverse as creative writing exercises to archival work to critically interrogate how institutional and creative practices mediate ecologies of healthcare in Britain.
At its core, we developed a supportive space for expressing and addressing critical issues that confront us as researchers in the medical humanities, and in our communities – from mental and sexual health, to the climate crisis and environmental racism. We formed vital connections in and beyond academia, during an often isolating experience of researching and living through the pandemic.
The network is now led by Dr Arya Thampuran (Assistant Professor, Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University) and Dr Kelechi Anucha (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Leeds Beckett University), former network members, and is supported by Durham’s Institute for Medical Humanities. In the intervening years, the academic landscape has shifted; we are increasingly seeing the need for dialogue between academic and non-academic spaces, to translate the theoretical into the material and drive change. In this second phase of the project, our focus is on cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral collaborations to redress issues in healthcare systems and research spaces for Black communities.
We also recognise the under-valuation and engagement of Black intellectual tradition and cultural practices and seek to develop decolonial practices that make research ecologies more conducive for minoritised individuals. We will prioritise research and career development through themed workshops, facilitate partnership opportunities, and support creative co-production, modelling an ethics of care and non-extractive methodologies.