Changing what counts as knowledge in academia
I founded the anti-racist health inequalities journal, Stolen Tools. The journal is dedicated to centring the voices of racialised minorities within health inequalities research. Stolen Tools challenges what counts as knowledge in academia, accepting empirical work, fables, poems, art, experiential pieces, campaigning articles, reviews and more. People apply saying who they are, what they want to say and why they are the person to say it. They are then paired with mentors to develop their ideas. We aim to resist the exploitation of academic publishing and everyone in our process is paid.
I am currently co-editing a Lancet series on human trafficking and health, where coordinate meaningful engagement. Through a Freedom Fund grant, we working with people with lived experience as co-writers, editors, advisors and more.
Supporting mental health practitioners work with sanctuary seekers
This project created a guide for mental health professionals (psychologists and psychiatrists) working with Afghan sanctuary seekers. It did so by collating and synthesising pre-existing knowledge in the academic literature and Afghan organisations, and hosting a stakeholder consensus meeting on creating a guide. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and included the Afghan Charities Paiwand, the Afghan Academy and the Association of Afghan Health Professionals on its advisory board and employed a lived experience researcher. You can access the guide here.
Inspiring better ethics in participatory research
Inspiring Ethics is a group of researchers who want to reshape ethical relations in community-based research and change the bioethical model of university ethics. We are particularly concerned with university and NHS ethical processes around participatory, cross-cultural, survivor, user-led and international research. Beyond academics, we are also people from migrant backgrounds, service users, activists, charity volunteers and more. We run workshops to inspire a new, more ethical way of conducting community research. See the visual notes from our October 2023 workshop opposite (credit: Tamara-Jade Kaz).
