About
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Behind the Academic Veil is podcast and blog series that centres the voices of racialised and minoritised students, community members and researchers while engaging in reflexive and reflective discussions on elements of mental health research involving anti-racism angles.
The project will explore key themes around:
Research engagement
- Racialised and minoritised students’ challenges and experiences of studying or working in research
- Engaging Black communities in research: what are the concerns and barriers to participating in research?
- How are stories understood and portrayed?
- why does it take time to change policy and practice
- Recruitment differences
- Issues with treating groups homogenously
- Cultural views of mental health
- Cultural appropriation
- Inter-group conflicts
Reciprocity
- Benefits, challenges, and ethical considerations of engaging RM groups in research
- How do we develop trust and sustain meaningful engagement?
- How can institutions authentically reciprocate?
- What resources/opportunities are needed?
Power (organisational, community, individual and researcher)
- Intersections of power and privilege
- Professionalism versus human connection in research
- Reinforcing oppression
- What needs to change?
Intersectional identities and researcher experiences
- Ethical considerations
- Positionality (including race, class, and educational privileges)
- Developing trust, humility, and representation (prospective PhD student applications).
Anti-racism work
- Allyship
- Challenging anti-Blackness
‘In the house with.’
- The episodes will feature experienced anti-racism researchers with expertise in health and social inequalities, intersectionality, cultural psychiatry, and community research.
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Anna-Theresa Jieman, an ESRC LISS DTP and NIHR ARC North Thames PhD candidate in Psychology at the Queen Mary University of London, founded the project. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and a Master’s in Social Research Methods.
Anna is interested in cultural, racial, and ethnic differences in experiences of common mental disorders among Black women and how these are considered in developing policy and practice. She has a strong background in qualitative and quantitative systematic reviews, primary qualitative research, stakeholder engagement, and co-production of knowledge.
Anna’s PhD project is focused on experiences of depression among Black women in the UK. Through a qualitative evidence synthesis, a cross-sectional survey, focus groups and interviews, she explores whether beliefs and expectations related to identifying as Black and a woman shape the experience of depression and whether this intersection, in turn, influences treatment and outcomes. She has presented findings from her project at national and international conferences.
Anna advises on and leads other projects involving anti-racism angles outside her research. For example, she has recently led a rapid review to develop an anti-racist practice for racialised and minoritised nurses and midwives within the NHS. Findings from the review were used to create a resource that NHS England published.
Through her PhD project, she found that she needed more opportunities and resources to spend time with community collaborators and peer researchers to reflect on experiences of working together (i.e., discussions about the relationship/process, power dynamics, reciprocity). Therefore, she wanted to provide a platform to engage and connect all the individuals (researchers across all levels, peer researchers, community members and community engagement officers) involved in the research process.
Anna hopes the content inspires how everyone involved in research work together – mainly the importance of building equitable relationships with racialised and minoritised individuals involved in anti-racism research.
You can follow on Twitter: ATJieman
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Dr Gillian StokesDr Gillian Stokes
Gillian’s comments after we recorded an episode on community engagement
I must say what a great experience it was meeting fellow participation colleagues on Behind the Academic Veil podcast. Impactful social movements often start with social interactions with like-minded people. Our conversations were insightful, important and game-changing on many levels. I left the podcast recording feeling hopeful, which is a really positive emotion to feel in these days where budgets are being cut, voices of those who matter are being silenced, and inspiration is stifled.
Gillian Stokes
LecturerUCL Institute of Education, Social Research Institute
Professor Kamaldeep Bhui CBEProfessor Kamaldeep Bhui CBE
Racism in our institutions and society is now better recognised after the Black Lives Matter campaign and owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately harmed marginalised groups, minorities and those with mental illnesses, and those living with long-term conditions. There is now greater recognition that institutional racism is endemic in all public services and all leaders are or at least should be interrogating and reforming their policies and practices. There are three reasons why progress is slow. First, people do not believe institutional racism exists, or there is a problem to solve; second, the problem is not as important as other priorities delivered with alacrity, whilst anti-racist praxis is overlooked or silenced. Lived experience is central to reminding leaders and the public of how the world really operates and how some are marginalised, mistreated, and not offered the best or equal opportunities in their journeys through school and higher education. Third, people find conversations and vocabularies about racism unsettling, disquieting, troubling and traumatic; some prefer silence and erasure of evidence and lived experiences of racism in everyday life.
Anna Jieman is a scintillating supernova, a leader, a PhD student, and an activist. She set up Behind the academic veil, a remarkable and courageous programme to bring lived experience of racialised and minoritised university students to our attention. She has designed the programme to include discursive and creative opportunities to tackle institutional racism; listening to students; engaging minoritised groups, exposing power and privilege, exploring ethics and positionality, and there is practical advice and support for PhD students. Leadership qualities of courage, compassion, and collaboration are necessary and rare; patience and coalitions are essential. The supernova known as Anna brings important gifts and will change how we undertake academic practice. In so doing, she is creating a powerful group of future leaders robust to the systems they must negotiate and empowered to change and improve them for all.
Professor Kamaldeep Bhui CBE MD FRCPsych FRCP(E) FRSA PFHEA
Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry &
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences
Senior Research Fellow, Wadham College
University of Oxford
Editor in Chief, British Journal of Psychiatry.
Director, World Psychiatric Association Collaborating Centre, UK.
Co-Director, Centre for Understanding Personality (CUSP)
Hon. Professor of Psychiatry, QMUL.
Hon. Consultant Psychiatrist, East London and Oxford Health NHS Trusts.
Sandra GriffithsSandra Griffiths
Behind the Academic Veil brings the opportunity to connect a new generation of Black academics to support the work of Black-led mental health and well-being organisations and tackling racial mental health inequality. There is an exciting opportunity for us to work together to understand and amplify the social capital, assets and resources, skills and talents, knowledge and experience within the African and Caribbean communities.
Sandra Griffiths
Business & Partnership Development Manager
CATALYST 4 CHANGES CIC
West Midlands African and Caribbean Mental Health Hub
Joy Francis, FRSLJoy Francis, FRSL
Words Colour are happy to be a founding-collaborator on Behind the Academic Veil, a timely and necessary digital platform to amplify the realities of racialised communities, students and researchers and the essential role of anti-racism and mental health research for collective change.
