Written by Dr Stephanie Ejegi-Memeh
In October 2023, I visited with mental health and wellbeing researchers from the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class (RGC), University of Johannesburg. In their own words, RGC “offers a home in the Southern Hemisphere for engaged scholarship around intellectual, creative, spiritual and everyday practices that both refuse and reimagine worlds shaped by the violent logics of white supremacy/coloniality, heteropatriarchy and global capitalism.” The visit aimed to share synergies across disciplinary, methodological and geographic settings and to explore potential collaborations in the field of race and gender.
We discussed my NIHR-funded project exploring the contribution of Black-led community organisations to Black mental health and wellbeing with researchers. This Independent Career Development Award project is funded by the Three NIHR Research Schools Mental Health Programme. I met with Dr Sinethemba Makanya and Dr Dee Marco. Dr Makanya’s work focuses on the construction of mental health by African traditional healers in South Africa. We discussed our methodological commonalities in the use of phenomenology and autoethnography to explore mental health and wellbeing. We also shared methodological challenges around conducting insider research in the field of Black mental health. Dr Makanya has written an excellent reflection about this here.
In our short meeting, Dr Makanya taught me a great deal about the contrast between Western models of health and traditional, Afrocentric focused knowledge and practice. There appears to be space for both Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the application of their philosophies by practitioners (such as izinyanga and izangoma) and Western models of mental health promotion (such as counselling and medication). One does not need to cancel out the other. However, Western models tend to dominate meaning that potential contribution for these Afrocentric, traditional models are undervalued.
After our meeting I reflected on two points. First, how Black people in Africa have such close ties to their history, land and culture and that these have been severed for many of us in the wider African diaspora. What are the mental health and wellbeing effects of being disconnected from our African roots? Second, given Dr Makanya’s work on healing, I wondered what might we be able to gain from looking outside of mainstream mental health care in the UK? So yes, access to high-quality mental health services is important but there is also a need to acknowledge the importance of community-LED initiatives that promote Black mental health and wellbeing. Just within Sheffield, there are several community-led initiatives aimed at protecting and improving Black mental health and wellbeing. For example, SACMHA, a Black-led mental health organisation, recently launched a supported living campus, Breinburg Court. This campus comprises 12 self-contained flats and provides a welcoming and safe environment for elderly people and people with a history of mental health issues from African and Caribbean backgrounds. Adira is another local Black-led organisation hosting wellbeing workshops and self-care hubs, producing films and organising international Black conferences. On a national level, there are initiatives like Black Thrive Global’s Emotional Emancipation Circles. This programme offers peer support focused on healing from the impact of anti-Black racism. The sessions provide an opportunity for participants to build self-worth, connect and support each other by sharing stories and learning wellness skills. This kind of community informed and culturally sensitive work responds to the need for spaces where Black people can come together and self-define what good mental health and wellbeing looks and feels like.
Dr Dee Marco’s work focuses on the social and cultural practices and Black women’s methods of narration and storytelling. One of her current projects, Mother.Lab, is a Global South initiated and developed project which began in 2018. It is a physical and abstract laboratory in which women think through and curate the complicities of caring for children through the gaze of mothers. Building on this work, in 2022, she launched the House of Complaints, where women, mainly mothers but not always come together to share complaints with the aim of challenging dominant, patriarchal systems of oppression through embodied forms of knowing. We explored Sara Ahmed’s work on complaint as a method for fighting for justice and change. My Career Development project is due to end in June 2024 but this trip has provided ample ideas for potential collaborative projects to build and continue our work.
Overall, my visit to the University of Johannesburg was inspiring. I look forward to hearing more about the work of RGC at the upcoming Global Blackness Summer Conference which will take place in South Africa later this year. Like the best meetings of minds, we came away with more questions than answers! I am positive that the contacts established during this visit will be valuable for moving research, which challenges white and Global North supremacy, to the fore. The knowledge exchanged has added value to our shared endeavours which aim to re-shape research practice in ways which benefit, and liberate, Black communities. I’d like to thank the Three NIHR Research Schools Mental Health Programme for project funding, University of Sheffield Sociological Studies for their contribution to my flights, Juno Books (a Sheffield-based feminist queer bookshop) for their gift to the RGC library and James MacDonald, RGC research coordinator, for the coordination of my visit.
Sociological Studies Research 