26 Sept 2022
S7E1 | You Are Not Alone: Race + Mental Health w Dr Samara Linton & Rianna Walcott
Good luck with the start of another academic year: you are not alone. Mental health is often falsely presented as irrelevant to people of colour. Dr. Samara Linton and Dr. Rianna Walcott's brilliant The Colour of Madness explores mental health for and by people of colour across art, essays, poetry, and stories. Together with PhDiva Xine they discuss bridging the STEM/humanities divide through their collaboration and the uses of the book to communities, teaching, and health care professionals.
The Colour of Madness
https://linktr.ee/TheColourofMadness
https://www.instagram.com/colourofmadness/?hl=en
https://twitter.com/madnesscolourof?lang=en
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Dr Samara Linton (she/her) is an award-winning writer, researcher, and multidisciplinary content producer. Her work includes The Colour of Madness: Mental Health and Race in Technicolour (2022) and Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography (2020).
Samara writes for various publications, including gal-dem, Huffington Post UK, The Metro, New Economics Foundation, Fawcett Society, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Her published research includes an influential report on Ebola-affected communities for the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group (2016). She also sat on the editorial board for the British Medical Journal’s award-winning Racism in Medicine special issue (2020).
Samara worked as a junior doctor in east London before joining the BBC, where she worked in production. A University of Cambridge (BA Hons.) and University College London (MBBS) graduate, she is currently completing an MA in Health Humanities at University College London.
You can find out more about Samara's work at www.samaralinton.com, and she tweets at @samara_linton.
Rianna Walcott (she/her) is an LAHP alumna and PhD candidate at Kings College London researching Black British identity formation in digital spaces. Rianna combines digital work, decolonial studies, arts and culture, and mental health advocacy in her work, with a deep commitment to outreach work and public engagement. She co-founded projectmyopia.com, a website that promotes inclusivity in academia and a decolonized curriculum, and is the UCL writing lab's Scholar-in-Residence for 21-22. Rianna frequently writes about race, feminism, mental health, and arts and culture for publications including The Wellcome Collection, The Metro, The Guardian, The BBC, Vice, and Dazed. Rianna is co-editor of an anthology about BAME mental health - The Colour of Madness (2022), and in the time left over, she moonlights as a professional jazz singer.
Rianna will be based at The Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab at the University of Maryland-College Park. Research at this new lab will focus on race and technology, as well as the development of a pipeline program to introduce undergraduates and those in the wider community to the field of Black digital studies with the aim of working toward a more equitable digital future.
You can find out more about Rianna’s work at www.riannawalcott.com, and she tweets at @rianna_walcott.
