We are delighted to announce our confirmed Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellows who will be joining the Discovery Research Platform in June 2026.
Our Practice Research Fellowships support researchers from the health and voluntary sectors to undertake research into a critical issue they have encountered in their practice and to learn about medical humanities approaches and methods, and how these can enhance their research plans.
You can find out more about the confirmed 2026-27 cohort below.
Project Title: ‘How does prejudicial bystanderism shape systemic healthcare limitations into preventable and embodied harm and inform the affective experience of health inequality by ethnic minority women?’
Fouziya (she/her) is a Cancer Outreach Co-ordinator with extensive experience working within the voluntary and community sector. Her work focuses on addressing health inequalities, particularly among underserved and marginalised women. She has a clinical background, having trained and practised as a pharmacist before moving into the charity sector, and is passionate about bringing these two fields together. Fouziya is deeply committed to improving access to opportunities and delivering holistic health and wellbeing support, integrating physical health, mental wellbeing, social connection, and the arts to enhance quality of life. She is particularly passionate about culturally sensitive approaches to healthcare, community empowerment, and harnessing the power of art, culture, and storytelling to enrich lived experiences and bring meaning to people’s lives.
Project title: ‘First songs: Exploring the role of fathers in early years language development through song and storytelling’
David (he/him) is a creative health producer, artist and programme manager working across arts, health and communities in West Yorkshire. Before moving into NHS creative health leadership, he worked in the arts and cultural sector for over 20 years, including as Chief Executive of a multi-artform arts centre.
Through his work with Creative Minds and a range of cultural and community partners, he develops projects exploring the role of creativity in mental health, wellbeing, participation and recovery. His work spans inpatient mental health settings, community-based creative programmes, artist development and digital initiatives including Create & Bloom.
Alongside his strategic and programme development work, he maintains an independent creative practice in visual arts and writing. His current interests include creativity and care, participation, storytelling, and the role of arts and culture within public health and everyday life.
Project title: ‘”Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life” (Picasso) | exploring the use of art to create spaces for recovery.‘
Sophie (she/her) is the Creativity and Health Project Coordinator covering Trust wide inpatient and community mental health services, at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Teaching Trust and its linked charities. The Creative Health programme aims to embed creative activity and approaches into mainstream health and care settings, to increase engagement and wellbeing of both staff and service users. An artist and maker, with a background in the VCSE sector, Sophie is passionate about improving access to the arts for health and wellbeing.
Project title: ‘Heavy Metal Recovery Narratives’
Kate (she/her) is a Clinical Psychologist working in NHS Early Intervention in Psychosis Services in Wakefield for SWYFT. She is also a co-director of the Community Interest Company Heavy Metal Therapy which specialises in mental health peer support for people in the alternative music community. Her clinical interests are in voice hearing, dissociation, complex trauma and neurodiversity. Kate’s research focusses on recovery narratives and creative ways that these can be constructed for the wellbeing of both story tellers and recipients, and especially how these narratives are used in alternative music communities. She is interested in embedding co-production into both conducting and disseminating research in accessible formats.
Project title: ‘Evidencing how a Creative Health charity within an NHS PCN improves health and wellbeing outcomes for marginalised groups facing health inequalities.’
Maddie (she/her) is currently the Progamme and Evaluation Lead at Creative Health Camden. She has a Master’s degree in Creative Health from UCL and a BSc in Psychology from University of Sussex. She is passionate about the power of engaging in textiles to improve health and wellbeing, as she has a lived experience of severe anxiety and uses her own practice to support her mental health. When she is not at Creative Health Camden she is a freelance textiles artist, creating her own textile designs and making costumes for Burlesque artists – most recently making a giant After Eight Mint costume!
Project title: ‘Crafting Together: Modelmaking, Masculinity and Recovery in County Durham‘
Sam (he/him) is a freelance creative practitioner and researcher based in County Durham, working at the intersection of arts, community and wellbeing. His project Crafting Together: Modelmaking, Masculinity and Recovery in County Durham, in partnership with Northern Heartlands, explores how model-making and diorama-building support the mental health and recovery of men living with depression, anxiety, addiction, bereavement or illness; focusing on the quiet, unspoken companionship that forms in making-together communities. The research will work with men from local charities and model groups, culminating in a public exhibition in Durham in Summer 2027.
We warmly welcome Fouziya, David, Sophie-Jo, Kate, Maddie and Sam to the Discovery Research Platform and look forward to working with them.
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