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Information on the members of the Ethnicity and Race subgroup
Srishti Agarwal (Student)
I’m grateful to be a part of this EDI committee. I will be spending my upcoming 3rd year intercalating in Psychology.
I am particularly interested in the intersection between race and mental health and will be focusing on how it can be improved within UCLMS. As a woman from an ethnic minority background, I have first-hand experience of the taboos and stigma surrounding mental health within my own community.
More needs to be done to ensure that students from all backgrounds are given relevant and appropriate mental health support specific to their unique experiences.
I look forward to tackling some of these issues through my work with EDI. Please feel free to get in touch anytime.
Dr Irene Gafson (Staff)
Dr Irene Gafson (Staff) is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Whittington Health and a Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL within the Postgraduate department. She balances working as a doctor and educationalist with being a mother to two girls.
She chose to join the EDI committee to act as a representative for those who identify as Jewish. Being brought up in a traditional Jewish family, the recent high profile anti-Semitic outbursts on social media highlighted the need to educate and promote inclusivity.
Dr Lois Haruna-Cooper (Staff)
I am a senior clinical teaching fellow with the UCL Medical School Education Consultancy (MSEC) unit. I co-chair the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee, lead the Race subcommittee, and am a member of the Race Equality Advisory Group (REAG).
I work as a medical tutor for the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education, delivering clinical skills workshops for pharmacists delivering the NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS).
I volunteer with UCLMS’ widening participation project Target Medicine, attending events and supporting student mentors’ training. I also volunteer with ReachOut!, a mentoring charity, working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. I am a UCLMS alumnus (class of 2011. I am currently studying part-time for my masters in Health Professions Education.
In my clinical role, I am a GP and locum in practices in and around Luton. I live in Luton with my husband, and two young sons. In my (limited) free time I run 5km every morning, and love Soca, playing mas as often as I can.
I have had a deep-seated passion for education, and since my early teens have volunteered with various organisations to educate and empower young people including Hackney Summer University, Millennium volunteers, Tolerance in Diversity, and was a Millennium Award recipient in 2002.
Through my personal experience and various roles, I hope to use my experience to support positive change to improve racial discrimination in the medical school, and improve students’ experience.
Rupa Lakhani (Staff)
I was born in Vancouver, Canada, but moved to a small town in the United States at age seven where I spent most of my adolescence. My family and I were the only Asians in a town with little diversity, high levels of poverty, and where progression to university is low.
When I first moved to the US, I was separated from peers and placed in the ‘English as a Second Language’ class despite it being my first language. I’ve experienced racism all my life, in all four countries I’ve lived in. They’ve taken the form of overt, institutional and macroaggressions in educational, professional, and personal settings and have come from both allies and foes – it’s all around us.
My first visit to London, I remember seeing such beautiful diversity like nowhere else I’d been, and eventually I moved here. While London is diverse on a macro level, it’s not true in settings such as higher education and health care where more work needs to be done to diversify.
As the Senior Access Officer and Target Medicine Manager for UCLMS and a member of this EDI subgroup, I’m committed to help breaking down barriers and creating a more diverse and inclusive UCLMS for prospective students, current students, and staff. I’ve worked in Widening Participation for eight years, and am particularly passionate about working with students from underrepresented backgrounds to ensure all students have a fair chance to meet their true potential.
Dr Amali Lokugamage (Staff)
Dr Amali Lokugamage is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and Honorary Associate Professor at UCL. She works as Deputy Lead for Undergraduate Women Health at the Whittington Campus. She is Clinical & Professional Practice Deputy Academic Lead and a Student Support Tutor.
She had been involved in practically creating an inclusive curriculum and decolonising the medical curriculum. She also is recognised for her work in respectful maternity care.
John-george Nicholson (staff)
I’m a co-chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee and want to work with students and staff to make UCLMS a more equitable place.
I’m particularly focused on pushing beyond the rhetoric to a place where meaningful change becomes embedded into the everyday of our working and learning lives.
I’m also Head of Business Development (Education) for the Faculty of Medical Sciences and have had various roles at UCL over the last 10 years.
Tina Nyazika (Staff)
Hi! I'm Tinashe or commonly known as Tina. I was born in Zimbabwe where I had my childhood education.
Living permanently in England since my teenage years, I have at times found it challenging to blend the two cultures I have been brought up in, even though Zimbabwe was an English colony until 1980.
As one of a handful of black students in school both in Zim and England, during my nurse training in Guildford and as a senior nurse in critical care, I have experienced and seen colleagues subjected to racism in various forms. These micro and macro aggressions can become the norm. Ignoring these comments and suppressing the resultant feelings, not only normalises this behaviour but can impact our mental health, educational attainment, ability to learn and care for others.
As an educator who interacts with our medical students from years 1 - 6, I am in a unique and privileged position to be a catalyst for change in attitudes, skills and knowledge to enhance cultural competence. As a senior clinical skills tutor, I participate in teaching our 4th and 5th year medical students leadership skills where we address racism, discrimination and equality.
I have had the pleasure of teaching and facilitating on the UCLMS widening participation project Target Medicine. I have always had a strong desire to understand how people who are proud of their cultural heritage, like I am, can function effectively in a multicultural and ethnically diverse society, whilst maintaining their own identity.
I am proud to be part of the Race Equality Advisory Group within the EDI committee and am committed to working towards eliminating aberrant behaviour and promoting an environment where students and staff feel safe and valued.
Lauren Smith (Student)
I’m a 4th year student. I am also President of the UCL African Caribbean Medical Network, which aims to provide a safe space that offers wide-ranging support to prospective and current students of African and/or Caribbean descent.
I chose to join the Race subgroup of the EDI committee to try and enact change at UCL Medical School so that the Black medical students after me don’t have to experience some of the things that I did.
I hope to push for more student spaces, and changes to the curriculum to promote more inclusivity and tackle racial bias. There is an atmosphere of change at the moment and I hope that, together, we can make changes here at UCLMS too.