Spotlight on Professor Maria Kett

What is your role and what does it involve?

I’m a Professor of Humanitarianism and Social Inclusion and Director of the UCL Centre for Humanitarianism and Social Inclusion. My work spans research, teaching, and applied practice. My research started with disability in humanitarian contexts, and over time it’s expanded to include disability and climate change. I’m very interested in intersectionality - how different aspects of identity interact with health inequalities and wider social inequalities. 

I’ve always believed research should have real-world impact. Early in my career, I worked closely with charities in low- and middle-income countries, seeing firsthand what organisations can and can’t do. This has shaped my commitment to applied research. 

These days, a big part of my role is leading our Master’s in Humanitarian Policy and Practice. We’re on our second cohort, and it’s been fantastic - a huge amount of work, but incredibly rewarding. It might not seem and obvious fit for a department focused on epidemiology and public health, but humanitarian crises - whether migration, flooding or conflict - have profound impacts on health, both globally and here in the UK. 

How are you improving the health of the public?

I’ve been working in this field for quite a long time now, and in some ways the changes we’ve made have been incremental. But I do think they’ve been significant. For example, I mentioned the work we’ve done on climate and disability - there’s now a much wider scholarship and discourse around the impact of climate change on the lives of people with disabilities, and also how they’re engaging with activism and decision-making processes, whether that’s at the UN or COP. 

Our work isn’t always immediately obvious in terms of improving lives. It’s not a randomised controlled trial to demonstrate efficacy. But advocacy - that interface between policy and practice - is hugely important. I’ve worked for years with the Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub), and I’m incredibly proud of what they’ve achieved. They’ve had a massive impact and leveraged change on a global scale. 

I’ve also done work on assistive technology with the GDI Hub. One of the things we often say is that assistive technology doesn’t save lives in a humanitarian crisis, but without it, lives are lost. And I think that’s a good way of explaining our work more broadly. It doesn’t always immediately save lives, but without raising awareness, talking about these issues, and finding the evidence to show what works and what doesn’t, we wouldn’t have made the improvements we’ve seen. So while we may not be “lifesaving” in the short term, we absolutely have a longer-term impact. 

What do you find most interesting or enjoyable about your work? 

There’s never a dull moment! I’ve been at UCL for a long time, but I feel like I’ve had several different roles during that time. My focus has shifted, and that’s kept things fresh. I’ve met fabulous students, from undergraduates to PhDs, and that’s always rewarding. Teaching is structured in some ways, but you never know what’s going to come up in class. Research is similar: opportunities arise that you might never have anticipated. 

Recently, for example, I put a grant in together with colleagues in a computer science department at a Turkish university. It’s been an absolute joy. We don’t know yet if we’ll get the funding, but even if we don’t, I think the collaboration will have a life beyond the grant. That unpredictability, and those unexpected connections, is what I enjoy most. 

How have cross-disciplinary collaborations shaped your research? 

They’ve shaped it completely. If you work on issues like disability or ageing, you can’t do it without crossing disciplinary boundaries. It’s impossible. I’ve worked with engineers, computer scientists, colleagues in brain sciences, and of course in health psychology and epidemiology. 

Some of my most interesting work has come from those intersections. UCL has been great for that - the openness, the forums, the small grants through Grand Challenges. Those opportunities have enabled collaborations that I couldn’t have imagined at the start. My disciplinary background is anthropology, but sometimes I forget that because I’ve been working so long with colleagues in other fields. Those perspectives haven’t just influenced my research, they’ve really formed it. 

What advice would you offer to others interested in developing cross-disciplinary research?

Take the opportunities. Go to events. Meet people. Be open to unexpected collaborations. Some of my best projects started with chance conversations. 

And don’t be afraid to take risks. Not every grant will succeed, and that’s okay. If you don’t put the idea out there, nothing will happen. Some of my most interesting work has been at the boundaries of other disciplines, and that’s where innovation happens. Take the opportunities, even if they feel a bit risky. 

What’s next on the horizon for you?

I’m really interested in bringing a lifecourse perspective into humanitarian work, and thinking about things in a much more nuanced way. We talk about complexity a lot in the humanitarian sector, and complexity scares people. But the truth is, there’s never one simple answer. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. 

If there was, we’d all be out of a job! So I want to explore how we can embrace that complexity and use it to generate better insights in areas such as ageing and disability across different stages of life in humanitarian contexts. 

If you could make one change in the world today, what would it be?

That’s such a hard question. I’d want a fairer world. But I don’t think there’s just one thing that would change everything. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d say no poverty. But really, I think changing people’s perspectives about justice and inequality would make a huge difference. 

Scarcity breeds competition, and that makes people fight harder for limited resources. That’s where we see division instead of collaboration. If we could shift perspectives towards fairness, justice, equity - that would be transformative. I don’t know exactly how you do it, but that’s what I’d want.