Tackling Inequalities and Engaging Communities at the Margin

Professor Jules Pretty is Emeritus Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex. His sole-authored books include The Low-Carbon Good Life (2023), Sea Sagas of the North (2022), The East Country (2017), The Edge of Extinction (2014), This Luminous Coast (2011), The Earth Only Endures (2007), Agri-Culture (2002), The Living Land (1998), and Regenerating Agriculture (1995).

He is former Deputy-Chair of the UK government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, and has served on advisory committees for UK research councils and the Royal Society. He was appointed A D White Professor-at-Large by Cornell University from 2001, and was Founding Editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. He received an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture, an honorary degree from Ohio State University, and the British Science Association Presidential Medal (Agriculture and Food) in 2015. He was appointed President of Essex Wildlife Trust in 2019, is Chair of the Essex Climate Action Commission, was also a trustee for WWF-UK, and was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Essex in 2023.

This Luminous Coast was winner of New Angle Prize for Literature, and The East Country was winner of the East Anglian book of the year. He is host of 80 podcasts and films (in the series Louder Than Words and Brighter Futures) and writes the series The Climate Chronicles at julespretty.com.

Professor Anuj Kapilashrami is an interdisciplinary social scientist trained in Public Health and Sociology. She is a Professor in Global Health Policy and Equity at the School of Health and Social Care and the Director of the Centre for Global Health and Intersectional Equity Research at the University of Essex.

With extensive research experience in health policy and systems research, her work focuses on health inequalities and structural determinants of health and well-being, particularly among marginalised populations such as migrants. She is the Founding Chair of the Migration Health South Asia network and a long-standing member of the People’s Health Movement. She also serves on the Gender Advisory Panel for WHO’s Human Reproduction Programme.

Professor Neil Quinn is a Professor in Social Work and Health Equity, Founding Director Centre for Health Policy, University of Strathclyde. Neil is an international leader in social work and public health, with visiting professorships at Yale and New York Universities. His expertise lies in health inequalities, human rights, and citizenship, with a strong commitment to working alongside vulnerable groups including those with mental health challenges, asylum seekers, refugees, and people experiencing homelessness.

He leads several major research and knowledge exchange initiatives, including as Principal Investigator of the Horizon 2020 Citizenship, Recovery and Inclusive Society programme, a national project on the right to health and participation, and long-term work with Barnardo’s on young people’s mental health. He also directs two Chief Scientist Office-funded studies on COVID-19’s mental health impacts.

Neil plays a key role in national policy, serving on the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Mental Health Advisory Group, Public Health Scotland’s Inclusion Health Group, and the SNAP Human Rights Group on Health and Social Care. Internationally, he has advised the WHO on mental health rights and co-authored Public Mental Health: Global Perspectives and the UNCRC Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children Handbook.

With 25 years of experience in social work, public health, and community development, Neil has led a major health initiative in one of Europe’s most deprived areas, chaired the Sanctuary programme for refugees and asylum seekers, and co-founded the Declaration Health and Human Rights Arts Festival. He continues to lead collaborations with Yale and NYU on health citizenship and inclusive public health.

Dr Bahadir Celiktemur is a Research and Policy Manager at The Leprosy Mission of Great Britain his work centers around fighting stigma in the contexts of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

Dr Konstantinos Roussos is a lecturer in social work and social justice at the School of Health and Social Care in University of Essex. He is co-lead of the School's Critical Public Health and Social Policy research group and co-director of the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis at the University of Essex. His research adopts a discourse analysis approach in the study of social welfare and care, practices of communing and solidarity, and social movements and social justice. His research revolves around the broad theme of radical democratic and grassroots approaches in welfare provisioning in the context of multiple and interconnected crises.

Current areas of interest and research include:

• Social Work and Welfare policy and practice discourses, focusing on questions of power, critique and social justice;
• Grassroots welfare movements, with a focus on social and solidarity health clinics, community food initiatives, care, and the environment;
• Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (Essex School)
• Commons, prefigurative politics and alternative economies, with particular reference to processes of subjectivation, social organisation and relatedness;
• Critical approaches in understanding democratic engagement and involvement in health and welfare services;
• Participatory and creative methodologies in research with communities and people.

Professor Reza Majdzadeh is Professor of Global Public Health in the Interdisciplinary Research and Practice Division at the School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex. He brings extensive international experience in establishing health system strengthening initiatives that have advanced progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) at national and global levels.

His current research focuses on addressing critical issues such as health inequalities in coastal communities in the UK and broader health system dynamics across the Middle East and North Africa region.

Dr Ursula Read has a PhD in anthropology from University College London and is a lecturer in global public health at the University of Essex. She has conducted extensive ethnographic, arts-based and participatory research in Ghana, exploring lived experiences of psychosis and caregiving, traditional and faith healing, community mental health care and the globalisation of rights-based approaches to mental health.

She leads a UKRI AHRC network on the potential of creative arts for mental health advocacy in Ghana and Indonesia and is co-Investigator on NIHR HOPE researching homelessness and mental illness in Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Dr Lily Kpobi is a mental health researcher and clinical psychologist from Ghana. She has a PhD in Psychology from Stellenbosch University and currently works as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ghana.

Lily's research focuses on traditional and faith healing in mental health, community mental health systems and using creative participatory methods in advocacy and intervention development. She is also involved in examining global mental health issues with an emphasis on decolonial and indigenous perspectives.

Dr Sumeet Jain is a Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh Sumeet’s research explores the intersections of global health policy, mental health, and social work, with a strong regional focus on South Asia. He is particularly interested in community mental health in low-income settings, especially the role of community engagement, the development of locally relevant psychosocial interventions, and the ways poverty and marginality shape mental health outcomes.

A key strand of his work involves unpacking psychiatric and local categories of distress to inform culturally appropriate mental health services. He also examines the training and professional development of social workers and their role in mental health service delivery in non-Western contexts. Methodologically, his work is grounded in qualitative and ethnographic approaches, particularly in the evaluation of health and psychosocial programmes.

Recent projects include studies on recovery-oriented mental health approaches and non-formal care models in India, caste identity and psychological distress, public health initiatives addressing health inequalities in London, and mixed-methods research on poverty, stigma, and serious mental illness in India.