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  1. Queen Mary University of London
  2. Research
  3. Research Strategy
  4. Research Culture at Queen Mary
  5. The CIRCLE Fund
  6. Health inequalities: towards a reparative glossary

Health inequalities: towards a reparative glossary

  

Health inequalities workshop

Project workshop

Project team

Dr Kasia Mika-Bresolin – Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature (STA)
Dr Shital Pravinchandra – Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature (STA)
Dr Megan Clinch – Reader in Anthropology of Public Health (WIPH)
Dr Sara Paparini – Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Equity (WIPH)
Dr Adonna Francis – GP and Health Inequalities Co-lead for West One PCN and Community Paediatrics

Project description

While the historical, socio-political and environmental determinants of health inequalities are well documented across postcolonial studies and public health, imagining and realising a reparative vision and politics of healthcare remains a challenge. “Health inequalities: towards a reparative glossary” takes up this challenge. Through a series of workshops, the project breaks institutional and disciplinary boundaries to imagine what reparative healthcare could look like. Distinct from fixing, reparative approaches draw on relational and epistemic repair, and legal reparatory accounts of health inequities. Our project extends these insights to rethink healthcare.

How did the team come together?

Shital and Kasia are heads of the preexisting Health and Humanities Research Forum (formed out of a successful Enhancing Research and Innovation Cultures (ERIC) fund application). This CIRCLE project builds on ideas that came out of that network. Shital and Kasia knew of Meg and Sara from the forum and had attended reading groups together. Adonna had previously reached out to Kasia about the intercalated medical programme in medical humanities. The iBSc programme means that many staff in the Wolfson Institute have anthropology/sociology training in their background, so there is a natural affinity.

How did you decide on this question/topic?

The topic is focussed around a ‘justice driven’ approach to health that takes inequalities into consideration, and the term ‘repair’ aims to capture this approach. The idea of a glossary comes out of the interdisciplinary approach, where words can translate differently across field and researchers may assume a different meaning. There is a need to create a shared glossary as a tool to allow collaboration.

What activities will you undertake as part of this project?

A literature review will provide an overview of current work on health inequalities and repair, enabling an efficient identification of research gaps. Following this, three workshops will take place on the topics of health inequalities and repair in theory, health inequalities and repair in practice, and future directions in reparative health research. Workshops will be open to both academics at Queen Mary and community organisations and clinical and public health practitioners. A self-selected working group will then draw together next steps.

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