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Kiz Manley is the ‘Lived Experience and Programme Coordinator’ within AHRC/UKRI’s national research team for the ‘Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities Programme’, based at UCL.
Kiz helps amplify the voices of people with lived experience. Her aim is to help them improve how health systems work and for service-providers to be more culturally-competent and equitable in their provision of services. Her current role helps harness the power of lived experience to promote people-powered change. Her team is working on ways to support the integration of community assets within healthcare systems.
Kiz is the UK’s first Hip Hop Therapist. Her research interests include narrative and poetic inquiry and Hip Hop Therapy. Her MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes thesis explored the lived experiences of rappers and the therapeutic potential of Hip Hop and UK Bass Music culture.
Before joining UCL, she set up Hip Hop HEALS, a mental health social enterprise that spread knowledge and research about Trauma-Informed Hip Hop. She hosts and produces 'Glowitheflow' podcast on therapeutic Hip Hop, offering radical solutions to homelessness and mental ill health.
In her spare time, she volunteers as Lived Experience Champion for LENS (Lived Experience Network). She also runs Dubgasm: a social action fundraiser for Brum's foodbank and homeless communities.
Kiz is working with Prof Helen Chatterjee, Dr Linda Thomson and Dr Aris Moustakas on the 'Mobilizing Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities' project funded by the AHRC in collaboration with NERC, ESRC and MRC.
