Gargie Ahmad is a Bangladeshi British social researcher, with a background in anthropology and international development. Her PhD project combines data analysis with learning from interviews exploring people’s experiences, to investigate longstanding mental health inequalities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK. Gargie is interested in using research to support social justice work, is very keen on community engagement, and is also a volunteer contributor for the Brixton Blog writing on arts, music, culture, faith, and community events in South London.
She tweets @GargieAhmad.
Vishal Bhavsar is an epidemiological researcher and consultant psychiatrist. His research focuses on improving how mental health services and other public agencies work with local communities in addressing violence, including youth violence and domestic abuse. His current work involves developing the evaluation of a violence reduction programme with Lambeth Council, community organizations and residents. He was born in Leicester, and read medicine at Oxford and King’s College London. He trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as part of a Wellcome Trust-funded doctoral Fellowship 2013-2017. He has sung high tenor with a cappella groups since 2002, including with Oxford’s Out of the Blue.
He tweets @drvishalbhavsar.
Louisa Codjoe is a clinical psychologist of Ghanaian heritage raised in rural Yorkshire. Whilst studying for her DClin Psych at Oxford she became passionate about addressing mental health inequalities for people from marginalised communities. Her current research focuses on reducing mental health stigma in Black faith communities and cultural adaptations of existing psychological models. Louisa is the deputy director of SLaM PCREF (Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework), an NHS England initiative to reduce mental health inequalities.
Preety Das (Founder) is a higher trainee in Psychotherapy & Psychiatry and a researcher in mental health inequalities. Her parents migrated to the UK from Kolkata, West Bengal. After completing a Master’s in Public Health at Harvard, she undertook psychiatry training in South London. She founded the Maudsley Cultural Psychiatry Group with the aim of bridging the gap between marginalised communities and institutional practice. She feels passionately about promoting anti-racist training and practice using critical reflection, co-production and inter-disciplinary methods (psychology, sociology, philosophy, law). More personally, she enjoys running, meditation, poetry slam and all kinds of 90s R&B.
She tweets @PreetyDas1
Sarah Dorrington is a trainee in general adult psychiatry and medical psychotherapy and has just completed a PhD exploring inequalities in health and work in Lambeth, south London. She has a background in cultural studies, an interest in co-production, reflective practice and addressing inequalities in health and health care in south London.
She tweets @SarPsych
Allison Edwards is a General Adult Psychiatrist whose passion is to provide the best and most relevant care for the people she works with. Her interest in Cultural Psychiatry stemmed from her degree in Medical Anthropology, whereby she explored severe mental illness in Caribbean communities living in London. Being part of this community herself, she has a keen interest in reducing health inequalities and driving forward change. Her other interests include ‘spirituality & mental health’ and the Open Dialogue approach.
She (rarely) tweets @DrAllisonE
Kate Polling is a higher trainee in general adult psychiatry and a life-long South Londoner. She has just completed a PhD at King’s College London supervised by Prof Stephani Hatch exploring how rates of self-harm vary between different neighbourhoods and communities in London. She has an MSc in Epidemiology and her research combines analyses of large datasets from clinical records with in-depth interviews and focus groups. Her interests include the role of health services in perpetuating or reducing inequalities in mental health and how we can use reflective practice as clinicians and researchers to challenge ourselves on the impact of racism in our work.
She tweets @katepolling