We have asked our community to nominate Black colleagues - past, present and future - who have achieved in our disciplines through inspiring writings and presentations.
Below you can see a list of people that have received nominations so far.
Enrico Jones was a visiting professor at UCL for two years before his death. A great clinical psychologist and great person, for many years the only Black psychoanalyst in the USA. Wrote on race and therapy (a little) but was most interested in the social interaction of patient and therapist and its quantification. At UCL he was on the Faculty of our summer research training programme for advanced clinicians and was admired for his gentle pedagogy that could always see the sense in the senseless questions of fellows. His presentations on Q-sort techniques for quantifying the differences in the processes activated by different modalities of psychotherapy were inspiring. Controversially, he showed that CBT therapists were most effective when they were rated as behaving most like psychoanalysts.
Sharon James has dedicated over half of her career in libraries to supporting academic staff and students in the Division of Psychology and Language Science, primarily to those based in Chandler House. Working at UCL since 1998, Sharon has become a well-regarded staff member within Library Services.Sharon has always been heavily invested in promoting wellbeing at work, and routinely goes the extra mile to support staff and students. Volunteering for a ‘wellbeing champion’ role a number of years ago, Sharon has spent time working with colleagues on a central Library committee, rolling out wellbeing initiatives to over 350 staff across Library Services. Sharon has worked with colleagues on wellbeing projects such as creating resources for students, giving talks to librarians, and taking a lead on building a wellbeing book collection used by students and staff across UCL. In 2019 Sharon was short listed for a UCL Professional Services award, celebrating her achievements in the field of wellbeing. Sharon has been a volunteer first aider and mental health first aider for two decades, and outside of work spent many years as a trained counsellor. Through this Sharon has provided much needed support to a vast number of people.
Graduating with a first-class honours degree in Women’s Studies and Caribbean Studies, Sharon is an advocate for equality and will challenge in the work place when issues need addressing. Sharon recently contributed to the Library Services Equalities, Diversity, and Inclusion newsletter focussing on Black Lives Matter. This received praise from the UCL Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion team, resulting in further UCL-wide distribution. Sharon also plays an active part in library outreach and for the last 18 years has been working with the library team and UCL Alumni, fund raising and sending much needed SLT books and resources to Ghana, directly supporting education and therapy.
In 2019 UCL Library Services gained Customer Service Excellence accreditation, and Sharon was instrumental in providing evidence by creating engaging customer service training films. These were highly commended by the assessor and helped to secure the accreditation. Sharon continues to provide excellent customer service to the UCL community, and continually goes out of her way to assist those that need help. Sharon is an extremely valued member of the team, and continues to be a well-respected member of staff in PALS. This is reflected by the continuous warm feedback the library receives from students, academic staff, and visitors.
Dr Sharon Adjei-Nicol qualified with a BSc in Speech Sciences in 2004 from UCL and began working as a speech and language therapist (SLT) with adults with acquired speech, language and communication disorders. She returned to UCL in 2007 to complete an MRes in Speech, Language and Cognition, carrying out her dissertation with Professor Cathy Price (IoN). She studied for a part-time PhD supervised by Dr Suzanne Beeke and Dr Carol Sacchett (Department of Language and Cognition) alongside her work as an SLT, which included managerial roles in the NHS and in independent practice. During this time she also taught on the department’s MSc Speech and Language Sciences pre-registration speech and language therapy degree programme. After being awarded her PhD in 2020 after a lockdown virtual viva, Dr Adjei-Nicol secured a senior lecturer role in speech and language therapy at the University of Greenwich, and continues to work part time as an SLT. Dr Adjei-Nicol is passionate about encouraging more people from BAME backgrounds to enter the speech and language therapy profession. She has been part of UCL's Envision Programme talking to Black African and Caribbean school pupils about university and speech and language therapy as a career, and continues to regularly give talks to sixth form students from minority ethnic backgrounds. Dr Adjei-Nicol says “Being of Ghanaian heritage, I have felt a personal responsibility to support speech and language therapy in Ghana where the profession is in its infancy. I am secretary of a clinical excellence network called BRiGHt (British Ghanaian Therapy Partnership), which supports and collaborates with speech and language therapy training establishments and SLTs in Ghana. As part of this, I have delivered teaching and workshops to students at the University of Accra and currently mentor two newly qualified Ghanaian SLTs”. Dr Adjei-Nicol maintains active research collaborations with colleagues at UCL, most recently as a co-applicant for funding for a project to develop culturally relevant clinical guidelines to support the management of eating and drinking difficulties in Ghana.
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