Collective Creativity for health: A workshop with Artist in Residence Nora Wuttke

Nora received her architecture degree at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2009. She went on to complete an MA in Social Anthropology of Development at SOAS in 2010.

Following her studies, Nora spent 7 years in China and Myanmar. She was based for four years in Shanghai (2011-2015), where she worked for local and international architecture firms, including two and a half years as project architect at David Chipperfield Architects. In 2015 Nora moved to Yangon to work for Article 25, a London-based NGO, on the Reinvigoration of Yangon General Hospital and developed the masterplan for the hospital campus. Since 2017 she is an independent architect with projects in Myanmar. In 2018 Nora returned to SOAS for her PhD in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology.

Her main interest is the reciprocal effect of the built environment, individuals, society, and the state. Broader research interests include material culture; anthropology of space, place and architecture; anthropology of infrastructure; anthropology of the built environment; collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches; methodology and writing. Her regional interest is Myanmar (Burma).

Rochelle is interested in the promotion of community approaches to health globally, and views communities as a route to understanding and responding to the political economy of poor health, with a particular emphasis on the impacts of broader development issues such as poverty, gender, systems of governance, and community mobilisation (civil society). For the past decade she has focused largely on mental wellbeing and the experience of common mental disorders, and is a leading voice in the emerging field of social interventions in Global Mental Health. She has led a range of projects that focus on the development of community mental health interventions (in South Africa, Colombia, UK and Zimbabwe) and has contributed her methodological and mental health expertise to projects on community led responses to other health challenges, such as child health in Nigeria.  

Rochelle is an Associate Professor in Global Health and Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Global Non-Communicable Diseases, at the Institute for Global Health at UCL. She is the founder and Director of UCL's Global Network on Mental Health and Child Marriage.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, member of the ESRC peer review college, UK Trauma Council, among other affiliations.