PhD Social Anthropology, 2021

What has been your career pathway since graduating?

I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge in 2021.  My research focused on an organisation of disabled women traders in western Uganda.

My career has moved in and out of academia. Before my PhD, I already worked in policy and advocacy with a focus on disability. And since finishing, I moved back to similar work at Inclusion London, which supports Deaf and Disabled people’s organisations. I then took up a position as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS University of London. Following this, I returned to Inclusion London, where I currently work.  

We often think about academia as you’re either an academic or you’re not, and there’s no in between. That certainly hasn’t been the case for my work.

What is your current role? 

I am a Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Inclusion London. My role is predominantly policy and advocacy based, but does include some research, and I’m currently working on creating research partnerships between Inclusion London and universities, further blurring the line of what it means to be an academic.

I also sit on a government advisory panel for a civil service-run research project looking at the effect of a government programme targeting Disabled people, an opportunity that draws on my expertise across policy, advocacy and research.

How has anthropology influenced your work?

So much of what we do as researchers happens before you even start asking any questions. It’s about how you formulate the questions in the first place. Studying anthropology has taught me to interrogate this vital preparatory phase. I think that’s a very anthropological approach to question the frames of your own knowledge – why you’ve framed something in a certain way – not just to question the content.

Also, to ask what are the implications of this research? Anthropology has encouraged me to think through how research will affect real people in real life, particularly as we engage communities with lived experience.

What’s your advice for current and future anthropology students?

Follow what you’re really passionate about. If it means moving out of ‘traditional’ research positions, this is not failure! We need much better connections between academic research and the public, including people who design policies affecting people’s lives. Sometimes alt-academic positions are much better placed to do this vital work than people who are entirely placed within the academic world.