Dr Ava Kanyeredzi

Profile

I am the Digital Education Lead for the Wolfson Institute of Population Health based at the Unit for Psychological Medicine in the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health. I am a dedicated and creative teacher, with a commitment to student-centred empowerment and liberation pedagogy who is skilled at working across smaller and larger student cohorts to lead sessions, manage staff to complete marking and supervision and facilitate academic success. My teaching and reflexive practice surrounds how to democratise the learning environment, hear the voices of as many learners as possible and to gauge learner engagement.

Postgraduate Teaching

I am the Programme Director for the online MSc Mental Health: Psychological Therapies. I teach on the online and onsite version of this course. 

Research

Research Interests:

My research draws on feminist, critical and community psychology with a strong track record of working in partnership with health service and third sector organisations, to develop robust and impactful projects. I use mostly qualitative/participatory/action research methods to explore experiences of violence/abuse, mental distress, psychiatric spaces and seeking support. More recently I led an action research project to understand how faith communities respond to victim-survivors of domestic abuse (BA/Leverhulme Small Grants, 2021).

Examples of research funding:

I currently work on the Service Evaluation for Adira Project, Juno Women’s Aid (Nottingham).

Publications

Books

Kanyeredzi, A. (2018). Race, Culture and Gender: Black female experiences of violence and abuse. Palgrave Macmillan.

Book Chapters

Coy, M., Kelly, L., Vera-Gray, F., Garner, M., Kanyeredzi, A. (2016). From ‘no means no’ to ‘an enthusiastic yes’: Changing the Discourse on Sexual Consent Through Sex and Relationships Education, in Sundaram, V. & Sauntson, H. Sex and Relationships Education: Addressing Issues of Gender, Sexuality, Plurality and Power (pp. 84 -99). Palgrave Macmillan.

Kanyeredzi, A., Reavey, P., Brown, S.D. (2014). The Role of The Visual in Narratives of Violence: Co-creating Fissures in Taylor, Y (ed). The Entrepreneurial University: Engaging Publics, Intersecting Impacts (pp. 165-184). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kanyeredzi, A. (2013). Finding a Voice: African Caribbean Women Help Seeking, in Rehman, Y., Kelly, L. & Siddiqui, H. Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Minority Women and Children (pp. 253 – 275). Surrey: Ashgate.

Papers

Kanyeredzi, A. (2021). Why domestic abuse is such a difficult subject for churches (theconversation.com).

Kanyeredzi, A., Brown, Steven D., McGrath, L., Tucker, I. (2019). The atmosphere of the ward: Attunements and attachments of everyday life for patients on a medium-secure forensic psychiatric unit. The Sociological Review. 67 (2), 444-466.

Supervision

I am interested in supervising PhDs that seek to explore the intersections of race, spaces, faith, gender, mental distress and violence/abuse and those using visual/creative methods.