I had a first academic career in sociolinguistics, social psychology, anthropology and feminist studies first as a researcher and then as a lecturer. I have also used mental health services all my adult life and the distress associated with this put an end to that career in 1986. For 10 years I ‘lived in the community’, but importantly became involved in the English user / survivor movement. Then in 1996 these two identities – as user / survivor and as researcher – came together as a new career in ‘user-led research’. I started at an NGO that was tangentially part of King’s in 1996 developing a peer-led model of monitoring mental health services. I came to the Institute of Psychiatry in 2001 and much to my surprise ended up as Professor of User-Led Research 12 years later. 

My interests range from the very local to toe global but focussing always on the development of new knowledge and forms of support from users / survivors and persons with psychosocial disabilities themselves. And indeed now go beyond mental health. I am not a believer in the privileging of method with its associated ‘hierarchies’ and believe attention must be paid to underlying concepts. I am particularly influenced by critical theory and issues of intersecting marginalisation. Although I have degrees in psychology, social psychology and cultural studies, I would not name one single discipline as my ‘home’.