Sneha Raman

Sneha is a design researcher with expertise in participatory design. Her research portfolio spans a range of topics and contexts including: mental health of young people from ethnically diverse groups; online safety of young people with learning disabilities; care and emotional support for women around miscarriage; and reducing risk of harm and supporting people who use drugs to live well. A key research focus across these contexts is enabling genuine participation from citizens and communities with diverse abilities, sensitivities and lived experiences to co-design future health, wellbeing and care.

Tara French 

Tara is Programme Lead for Digital Inclusion within the Digital Health and Care Directorate, Scottish Government. She is also a Visiting Fellow at The Glasgow School of Art. Tara is passionate about design-led change across health and social care and has an interdisciplinary background in academia, policy and practice. Tara has expertise in facilitating transdisciplinary collaborations in the context of care and wellbeing, with experience of working at local and national levels. Her approach focuses on creating and enabling a culture of opportunity and empowerment through creative engagement and genuine co-design. 

Fiona Stephens

Fiona is a research assistant at Glasgow School of Art working on work stream 1 of EDIFY. Fiona has completed a Master of Research at the Innovation School at GSA, with research looking at curating multi-disciplinary approaches to enrich social support for mental health and wellbeing. She has a background in curatorial practice and is particularly interested in participatory engagement, knowledge sharing and the relationship between arts and health. 

Tallulah Street

Hello! I’m Tallulah (she/her), an illustration student and yoga teacher living in Cornwall. I’m passionate about the power of art and storytelling for healing – hopefully one day I’ll train as an arts therapist. Aside from painting, I love dancing, gardening and wandering along the coast path that I’m lucky to live by. I think my favourite film is Portrait of a Lady on Fire (at the moment at least!), but I’m also a sucker for anything by Studio Ghibli.

Beck Heslop

Beck (they/them) is an autistic postgraduate historian with a special interest in the lived experiences of disability. Being an active member of and advocate for the queer community, their favourite film is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and they have been known to dress in drag at attend screenings and theatre performances of the classic.

Heike Bartel

Heike Bartel is Professor of German Studies and Health Humanities at The University of Nottingham and passionate about the use of literature and art for better health. She has led interdisciplinary AHRC- and Wellcome-funded research projects on eating disorders in men and boys, and together with male experts by experience has designed arts-based training tools used by the RCGP, RCN and several charities. She is particularly interested in the role of films, animation, music, poetry and other writing by those with lived experience to help understand eating disorders better.

Tamsin Parnell

Dr Tamsin Parnell is an applied linguist and Research Assistant on the EDIFY project. She is broadly interested in the relationship between language and society. For EDIFY, Tamsin is looking at the language used to talk about mental health and, specifically, how people communicate and gain information about eating disorders online. She has previously published work on health communication, including COVID-19 and avian influenza, and on homelessness discourses.