ARC ROLE
UCL Mental Health for All Fellow, Springboard Awardee (Intersectional Trauma-Informed Recovery Approach to Mental Health)
PROFESSIONAL ROLE
Senior Peer Recovery College Tutor, North London Mental Health Partnership
EXPERTISE AND INTERESTS
As a recipient of Mental Health for All (MH-ALL) research funding, Xandra is developing post-doctoral anthropological research at UCL in the field of Mental Health recovery.
Xandra's research focus is intersectional trauma informed recovery. She is a practicing Senior Peer Recovery College Tutor at Camden & Islington Recovery College, which serves the NHS North London Mental Health Partnership and its communities. Her co-produced ethnography (Miguel-Lorenzo, 2023) takes inspiration from both her passion for the recovery approach to mental health challenges and trauma, and from her position as a lived experience researcher.
Xandra has worked in the London Boroughs of Barnet, Islington, Camden and Southwark for over 4 years in professional roles of Independent Domestic Violence Advocate and Mental Health Recovery College Tutor. She employs a gender-responsive, intersectional, trauma-informed approach working with people, as well as her lived experience of recovery from mental health challenges she experienced after conducting fieldwork(s) on gender-based violence. She uses co-production for recovery courses. She also is an associated trainer for Talk For Health, a peer-to-peer counselling organisation.
During her PhD at the LSE Department of Anthropology (2018), Xandra brought together her expertise in the field of gender studies and gender-based violence to conduct research in the Solomon Islands. She studied the first shelter for abused women and children founded and run by indigenous Anglican Religious Sisters in the aftermath of the national civil unrest known as the ‘Tensions’ and in the wake of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Xandra also holds a BSc Social Work and Social Anthropology and an MSc in Anthropology of Learning and Cognition, in which she gained the skills to carry out her ethnographic study.
Xandra has particular research expertise in gender. During her ethnographic research in the Solomon Islands, she identified the need to engage men in campaigning against gender-based violence, and following a process of consultation within the Church and in the community, she designed an action participation research project, based on applied anthropology, with the option to be co-produced and community-led. The project was funded by the EU in the Solomon Islands with a budget of € 88, 968.80 over 3 years. Xandra first conducted research on domestic violence in Spain in 2003, conducting a 9-months fieldwork in Granada, Spain, for a government funded project, in the Department of Social Work and Social Anthropology. She carried out archival and activist research in Bolivia and published an article on femicide. She completed a rapid ethnographic research at the Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition.