Arya Thampuran co-leads the Black Health and the Humanities Network. Assistant Professor at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University, where she is developing the decolonial strand in the Discovery Research Platform’s Narrative Practices lab. Her research is broadly situated at the intersection of the medical humanities and critical race studies; she is interested in how creative practitioners in contemporary African diasporic contexts express distress and healing in ways that exceed dominant Euro-American biomedical models and disrupt clinical framings of distress as ‘disorder’. She engages with a multimodal corpus of fiction, life writing, visual art, television and film by contemporary African creatives to explore how creative forms might re-form our understandings of wellbeing and care. Principally, her work is committed to a decolonial and intersectional approach, bridging interdisciplinary perspectives across the medical humanities, critical race, literary, and neurodiversity studies.
In her current role, Arya is working to facilitate critical conversations and interventions in decolonising healthcare research and provide support for scholars/practitioners in this field, drawing on the range of disciplinary expertise and interests across medical humanities research communities and communities of lived experience.
Kelechi Anucha is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Black British Culture within the English department at Leeds Beckett University. She is working on a project entitled ‘Madness in Black British Literature and Cultures: Genre and Counter-psychiatric frameworks’. Her interest is in how genre forms shape understandings of cultural representations of race and mental illness and how the disciplines of mad studies, Black studies and medical humanities might speak to one another.
Kelechi completed her PhD in English at the University of Exeter as part of the Wellcome-funded Waiting Times research project team. Her doctoral project - ‘Out of Time: Temporality, Form and Fugitive Care in Contemporary Literature and Culture’ - examined the temporalities of narratives about death in medical, carceral and environmental contexts. She is also a co-lead within the Black Health and Humanities Network and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University – the institution which hosts the BHH Network.
Dr Tanisha Spratt is a Senior Lecturer in Racism and Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London. Building on her sociology background and working across literary and cultural studies, Tanisha’s research centres on racial inequalities in health outcomes in the UK and the US. Specifically, her research focuses on the role of neoliberalism in promoting and sustaining understandings of personal responsibility, deservedness and grievability when it comes to illness, death and dying. Tanisha is particularly interested in how racism-induced stress can lead to poor health outcomes for racial and ethnic minority groups, and how expectations of resilience can further impact those health outcomes. She is also interested in how experiences of social (in)visibility affect racialised groups, and how that often intersects with experiences of mental and physical illness.
Ayotunde Ojo’s research seeks to explore the significance of local capacity in achieving health goals through a historical study of international collaborative efforts between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and indigenous actors in Nigeria in responding to health challenges. Contemporary historical scholarship surrounding the studies of Global health intervention in Africa have an overemphasis on western international actors and have paid scant attention to the place of Africa’s capacity during partnership with international health institutions.
Ayotunde’s research contributes to the studies of decolonising global health history by exploring how the operational strategies employed by indigenous actors complemented WHO’s effort in Nigeria. Image credit: World Health Organization, 2018.
Chimwemwe Phiri is a final-year doctoral researcher in medical anthropology and visual history at Durham University. Her research examines the legacies of two medical photographic collections related to two former British colonial medical officers that are held in four UK based archives. Using archival research, visual analysis and curatorial practice across Malawi and Sudan, her PhD project explores histories of race, violence, the ethical dimensions of medical photography, questions of ownership and the afterlives of archival material.
Rianna Raymond-Williams is a PhD student at Glasgow Caledonian University London. Her research explores how Black Caribbean women experience sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care services in the UK. In 2020, she co-wrote and directed a short animation called I Know He Loves Me, which aimed to shine a light on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from a young Black woman. In 2021, she edited and self-published an anthology titled More Than Talk: Perspectives of Black and People of Colour (BPOC) working in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in the United Kingdom (UK) which highlights the inequalities experienced by Black and racialised people within sexual and reproductive health. Over the years, Rianna has merged youth work, community organising, health awareness and journalism to forge a range of projects. As part of documenting her PhD journey, Rianna hosts a podcast called Ree Speaks which aims to shine a light on a range of inspirational activists, researchers, practitioners & more that exist inside & outside of the academy through engaging in a variety of conversations discussing race, education, health and so much more. Rianna has 10 years of experience working in sexual and reproductive health, her previous roles include working for the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain and the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT). She has also freelanced as a journalist, predominantly covering community news and health and wellness for The Guardian, The Metro, Black Ballad, The Newham Recorder, The Stratford Recorder Recorder, The Voice Newspaper and The Independent.
Maxwell A. Ayamba is a PhD research student in Black Studies at the Department of American & Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham/M4C-AHRC. His research explores the trajectory of ‘race’ ecology and environmental justice in the UK He is an environmental journalist, former Associate Lecturer/Research Associate at Sheffield Hallam University. Maxwell is Founder/Director of the Sheffield Environmental Movement, and co- founder, the 100 Black Men Walk for Health Group (2004) which inspired production of the national play, "Black Men Walking” by Eclipse and Royal Theatre Production Company in 2018/19. Maxwell was the first Black person on the Board of the Ramblers Association. He was also Portfolio Advisory Board Member of the Imperial College’ Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) Explore Nature project and has published research papers, chapters in books, articles in the media and has also delivered national and international talks in relation to Black & Ethnic Minority communities and the environment in the UK. Maxwell was the recipient of the National Lottery Heritage Award for 2021 and named in 2021 as one of the 70 most remarkable people in the history of the Peak District National Park since its creation in 1951.
Martin Munroe spent over 20 years as an Analyst at various global investment banks, including Citigroup and JP Morgan. A 2018 MA Creative Writing graduate of Royal Holloway, with Distinction, he made a career change. In 2020 he started a full time PhD in Creative-Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia, having been awarded a full Studentship from the CHASE consortium of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
His research currently examines themes of black male masculinity and sexuality in contemporary Britain, under the supervision of Professor Tessa McWatt and Professor Alison Donnell.
Emily Kate Timms is a Lecturer in Contemporary Global Literatures at the University of Lincoln. She is currently developing her first monograph, Postcolonial Ageing in Literature and Film: Elderhood, Care, Dementia.
She thinks across age studies, dementia studies, and the Medical Humanities to demonstrate how Caribbean and Māori writers and directors have always been invested in reimagining what it could mean to age outside of coloniality’s damaging consequences. Such works produce radical perspectives on agency in old age, diasporic care, dementia-experienced lives, and intergenerational wellbeing. Consequently, Emily’s research interrogates racialised beliefs underpinning gerontological understandings of ‘successful’ ageing and the individualist, ableist, and productivist logics entrenched within colonial systems of care and conceptualisations of intergenerational health and wellbeing throughout the (White) Global North. Emily is also interested in developing decolonial and anti-racist approaches to intergenerational health activism.
Lara Choksey is Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures at UCL English. She is the author of Narrative in the Age of the Genome (Bloomsbury 2021) and the editor of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Readings (2014). She has published articles and essays in Journal of Historical Geography, Medical Humanities, The Sociological Review, Journal of Literature and Science, and Media Diversified, and chapters on precision medicine and poetry, and decolonial feminist speculative fiction.
Kariima Ali’s current research project at Roehampton is entitled ‘Exploring the History of Black Women’s Mental Health Organising in Britain from the 1970s – Present Day’ is a collaborative research degree with the Black Cultural Archives.
Kariima’s project is focused on the history of Black women’s mental health campaigning in Britain and seeks to redress the erasure of Black women’s collective agency in contemporary thinking about social change particularly within the health sector. She’s interested in utilising archival collections to analyse and offer new perspectives on how Black women undertook critical political analyses and turning them into praxis.
Niquita holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology, a Distinction-awarded Masters degree in Social Work, and has completed a PhD thesis focused on exploring Eurocentric biases within health and social care, particularly concerning the mindset and behaviour of racialised individuals and communities. Through her doctoral research, she critically analysed the normalisation of a culture perpetuating alleged inferiority, otherness, and difference within these sectors. Through this work, she provided a platform for frontline mental health professionals, amplifying their voices and shedding light on the clinical and psychological implications of this normalised culture for racialised individuals and communities. Drawing upon over a decade of expertise in providing therapeutic interventions to high-risk children, young people, adults, and families grappling with mental health challenges, Niquita seamlessly integrates practical knowledge with ongoing research in the fields of Psychology and Health, and the Humanities. Committed to diminishing inequalities in access to essential care, treatment, and information, Niquita actively collaborates with communities, NHS Mental Health Trusts, and Health and Social Care providers. Her contributions extend beyond mere participation, as she plays a pivotal role in shaping best practices, driving quality improvement initiatives, and advocating for systemic change within the mental health landscape.
Nikolaos Papadogiannis is a Lecturer in European History at the University of Stirling. His work lies at the intersection of the history of activism, queer studies, and medical humanities. His current research explores the transnational connections between HIV activists in Western Europe, including the UK, in the 1980s-1990s. This intersectional project considers the contentious cross-border collaboration between Black and white HIV activists from various genders and sexualities. An AHRC RDE Fellowship funded the project’s first stages. Moreover, Papadogiannis is co-convening, also alongside Black sexual health specialists, a public workshop series aiming to help make HIV campaigns in Scotland more inclusive for Black people.
Meghan is pursuing a PhD at the University of Liverpool, in Human Geography. Her PhD title is
Fatness and the Urban Environment: A study of fat experiences through the lenses of racism, Class and Health. She aims to understand the way fatphobia, racism, and classism intersect with the way that cities function in a UK context. Meghan graduated in sociology from the University of Leicester in 2013 and got a master’s in social and public policy from the University of Leeds in 2016. After taking a break from studying to work as a Researcher in London, she has moved back up North to do her PhD.
A Nigerian-British force of nature, Jumoke has a great passion for social justice, not least because her life as a disabled Black woman quite literally depends on it. One half of The Triple Cripples, Jumoke writes and speaks on her experiences and is extremely passionate about eradicating the cultural taboos surrounding illness and disability within the Black community, in the UK, and the global diaspora. She is currently doing her Masters degree on these topics. When not busy studying, Jumoke is a professional baby girl, a Yorubaddie, if you will.
Andre Etchebarne, DCounsPsych, is a Lecturer in Counselling Psychology at the University of Manchester. He teaches on the Counselling Psychology Professional Doctorate and works for a community pain management service in the NHS. Andre is passionate about addressing health inequities related to racism and improving the training of mental health professionals.
Cydney Phillip is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL. Her work is primarily concerned with artistic responses to systems of ecologically mediated, racialized harm. She is currently completing a book, tentatively titled Caught in the Crosscurrent: Narratives of the Plantationocene from the U.S. Gulf Coast, which explores the ways in which contemporary writers, photographers, and hip-hop artists offer alternative epistemologies of the plantationocene, and expose the ways in which plantation structures of the past and present are indebted to water.
Judy has over 40 years of experience within creative industries including theatre, television production and broadcasting services working at executive level at ITV, Ericsson and Technicolor. After ill-health forced early retirement, Judy published her debut memoir, available on Amazon. ‘Nought To Sixteen’ explores my relationship with friends, family and ill health.
Judy is currently completing a Practice-Led Creative Writing PhD at Leeds University, which focuses on the next phase of my memoir. The critical element considers the role of identity while exploring the interconnectedness of chronic illness and health provision. How academia and creative writing can inform intersectional thinking will be at the heart of this research project.
