Feminist beginnings

I felt compelled to get involved in women's organisations from a young age, both to find community and as an outlet for the confusing mix of solidarity, anger, and political curiosity you can feel as a young woman. From 2018, I was a volunteer researcher for women's organisations after feeling appalled hearing about the realities of the commercial sex trade. My first publication was a parliamentary submission for Nordic Model Now! to the Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry on Universal Credit and 'Survival Sex'. I was delighted when, as a result of the submission, the organisation was invited to give oral evidence to the committee. 

To infinitives and beyond

In 2019 I began my PhD, pivoting towards another lifelong passion: language. I had been learning British Sign Language, and was becoming increasingly interested in the unique vantage point that sign languages give into human language and the mind. I wanted to understand how we turn our perceptions of the world around us into things we communicate about. My interest in language research was from a social perspective - how do we create and negotiate language systems between lots (and lots!) of different people over time? How do we agree on meaning? What happens when people grow up without language input?

Making scenes in Várzea Queimada

In 2019, I was welcomed into a research team in Brazil working with a small, rural community in Brazil which had a high prevalence of deafness, where deaf individuals were doing what humans do best: making order out of chaos. In the village of Várzea Queimada, far from the nearest deaf community or school, a language had naturally emerged over three generations between its deaf residents and their extended families and friends. As social necessity carved a desire path, human language was created anew. 

And so began our documentation efforts for Cena (literally 'scene', the word used by locals to describe what signers make with their hands). In 2023, we published a dictionary of the language - a culmination of years of research and collaboration with the community, and a celebration of human language, life, and ingenuity. My PhD thesis looked at the influence of universal human cognition on the grammar of this young language.

Post-post-doctoral research

Following my PhD, I craved more direct impact from my research and wanted to explore other aspects of social life and society, so I turned to freelance social research. I undertook various commissioned research projects covering topics such as data collection practices for sexual orientation; equality and diversity workplace schemes; health, safety, and wellbeing of lesbians in the UK; and domestic abuse. I pride myself on conducting projects which prioritise intellectual rigor, especially when data builds a picture of realities which may be uncomfortable or complex.

In a way, it is a full circle back to my beginnings, trying to describe and explain human lives and relationships through data (and the 1,000-strong conference I organised with UCL Women's Liberation SIG shows I haven't forgotten my feminist roots!). A future in this kind of research feels exciting, as there is, thankfully, an appetite for careful, evidence-based research that can have measurable impact. Long may that continue.