My research focuses on co-construction, inequalities and social work. I am currently a doctoral candidate with the European network ‘Co-construction in the field of social welfare’. My research focuses on the effective dissemination of co-construction strategies in social services. I will conduct interviews, and facilitate focus groups where lived and learned experience can merge and help steer the research project.

I spoke at an event organised by ATD Fourth World and the Parents, Families and Allies Network on the ethics of care when working with people living in poverty. I delivered a presentation on ATD Fourth World’s Family Support programme, outlining ways to work with vulnerable adults in caring and non-judgmental ways. I then participated in a discussion on implementing the ethics of care in social work, and on the disproportionate targeting of families in poverty by child protection interventions. I wrote this article after the event.

Studies

For my Master’s degree in Sociocultural Linguistics, I authored research papers on tabloid discourse around economic crises, young people’s attitudes around immigration and multilingualism in the UK, and representations of ‘culture’ in British media. I also conducted critical reviews on ideology and power in language, specifically looking at sexism, and examined constructions of identity and meaning in speech.

I used a range of data collection methods and methodologies, including semi-structured interviews, Multimodal and Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Metaphor Analysis, and Corpus Analysis.

My dissertation focused on discourses in British social work, and the experiences of parents living in poverty. After a comprehensive literature review on ideologies and discourses in British social work and through semi-structured interviews, I compared narratives with parents’ experiences, exploring topics like labels, jargon, and politeness, and questionned the impact of language on parents.

Training

At Goldsmiths, University of London, I trained on data collection methods, transcription, focus groups, qualitative analysis, questionnaires, interviews, ethics, and academic writing.

As a Project Officer for ATD Fourth World, I supported the delivery of focus groups around poverty and the Right to Family Life, transcribed recordings and reviewed data, working with lived-experience participants, social workers, and academics.

I completed Heard’s training course on communicating about poverty, which included a session on how to safely conduct interviews with people with lived experience of inequalities.