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The Critical Global Health Network is a UCL-wide network led by early career researchers who are concerned with critical global health and decolonisation.
The Critical Global Health Network is a UCL-wide network led by early career researchers (ERCs) who are concerned about critical global health and decolonisation.
What is Critical Global Health?
We provisionally define it as an emerging field of global health that typically takes theoretical and/or methodological approaches from social sciences and humanity (such as using qualitative methods and co-production) at least partly. By doing so, it often aims to address culture and context, critically consider colonial legacies, and transform Anglo-centric hegemony of knowledge in health and medicine.
Aim of the Network:
We aim to provide a space for sharing knowledge and experiences, and having discussions on the following key questions;
- What is critical global health? What is decolonising global health?
- What do inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial collaboration look like.
Our main activities:
- Mapping and needs assessment of ECR critical scholars.
- Organise events and seminars on critical global health.
- Sharing the records of events and seminars via social media (podcast, Twitter).
Our focus and values:
In our activities and discussions, we emphasise the importance of inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial collaboration, and promoting critical approaches that could inform policies of views from the ground, and the positionality and reflexivity in knowledge production.
Actions to join us!
- Join the Network - If you are interested in joining the Teams group of our Network, please drop me a line at Yuko Otake (yuko.otake@ucl.ac.uk) so you will be in the loop of the event/seminar news and other information.
- Join the Survey - We currently running a survey for needs assessment here. This is only for early career researchers. If you would like to have a say on the Network organisation as a non-early career, then please feel free to send Yuko Otake a message.
Yuko Otake (Chair; yuko.otake@ucl.ac.uk), Sophia El Ouazzani, Rebecca Irons and Aaron Koay
UCL Critical Global Health Network Steering Committee
- Dr Yuko Otake
I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at UCL (IOE), and am taking a chair role for the steering committee for UCL Critical Global Health Network. My expertise includes critical global mental health and decolonisation across inter-disciplinary fields of social psychology, anthropology, and global health.
I started my career as community psychologist in both high-/low-income settings. This raised my awareness of the structural violence leading to health inequity, neocolonialism in international interventions, neglected needs of people on the ground, and missed opportunities to collaborate with community resources, which formed my critical and decolonial approaches to global health. My backgrounds as ethnic minority and my family tradition of Japanese indigenous healers also contributed to my decolonial lens.
The critical global health initiative is increasingly attracting early career researchers in the current context of post-globalisation and anthropocene. Our Network provides a space for sharing knowledge and experiences, and having discussions on what critical global health and decolonisation are, what inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial collaboration look like, and how we could inform policies of views from the ground. We are open to anyone who shares similar interests and willingness to work towards critical global health promotion with us.
- Dr Rebecca Irons
As a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow working at the intersections of health and social justice, I am a strong advocate for collective action, horizontal collaboration, and the support and inclusion of those in positions of precarity.
In my role as a steering committee member for the network, I hope to help spark dialogue and cross-disciplinary communication on the pressing, critical issues that face those who research global health in the contemporary Anthropocene. My research expertise focuses on the health impacts of gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity, geopolitics, migration, and coloniality in Latin America and the United Kingdom. Whilst I am of course keen to advance further collaborative enquiry in these areas, I see the network principally as an opportunity to address the structural barriers faced by ECRs in particular who wish to undertake this kind of work – such as contract precarity, academic hierarchism, and funding restraints. I believe that supporting early career researchers is a priority when ensuring that enquiring minds in critical global health can best develop and work towards the greater social justice in health that is urgently needed.
- Aaron Koay
Initially trained as a pharmacist, Aaron Koay (he/him) is currently a PhD researcher at the UCL Institute for Global Health and a Research Officer at Global Health 50/50. Aaron's interdisciplinary PhD research explores the operationalisation of intersectionality in global health governance to achieve health equity.
As a steering committee member of the UCL Critical Global Health Network, Aaron is passionate about bringing a health policy and politics lens to understanding the ways in which global health inequities are shaped by actors, institutions, and interests to inform policy action and reform. In particular, Aaron is interested in issues related to governance, intersectionality, gender, decolonisation, anti-imperialism and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Through this Network, Aaron is keen to cultivate a community for Early Career Researchers and foster exchanges and collaborations across disciplinary boundaries.
You can find Aaron doing a headstand on his yoga mat when he is not at work! Follow Aaron on Twitter @aaroncckoay.
- Sophia El Ouazzani
I am a dedicated Ph.D. student in Global Mental Health at University College London, focusing on occupational justice and recovery for individuals with mental health disabilities. My research explores cross-cultural psychiatry and cultural adaptations to mental health services, notably in Morocco and diverse communities in Canada, including immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
As a certified mental health occupational therapist, my collaboration with ethnoculturally diverse groups has heightened my cultural sensitivity and addressed challenges in mental health rehabilitation access. Notably during my work with Humanity & Inclusion, I actively collaborated with healthcare and community workers, as well as policymakers, contributing to the development of a culturally acceptable occupational therapy practice in Morocco.
My participation in the steering committee for UCL Critical Global Health Network is a great opportunity to further my knowledge in Critical Global Mental Health and learn more about decolonising mental health practices for ethnoculturally diverse population and settings. To support the sharing of knowledge among ECRs across discipline and expertise is a great opportunity, in my sense, to gain various perspectives on current global challenges and efficiently achieve common goals in Global Health.