Community engagement in interdisciplinary mental health research: insights from UK and global health studies
In recent years, mental health researchers are (required to) addressing contemporary challenges through interdisciplinary research, which is underpinned by robust engagement with and involvement of patients, carers, service users and providers, and the wider public. Such interdisciplinary mental health research relies on the collaboration among researchers from radically different academic disciplines, working closely with those providing health care and people at the receiving end of care. Team members in mental health collaborations, however, often experience competing demands and obligations to and from researchers in their ‘home’ discipline, to and from local communities in which they work, to and from mental health policy makers, and to and from funding bodies. Added to this mix is the pressure to maintain a consistent level of academic rigour, reflexivity and comprehensibility across academic disciplines, for health service providers and policy makers. In this seminar, Professor Dikomitis will reflect on the challenges and opportunities in community engagement in interdisciplinary mental health research.
This seminar is taking place on 2nd April 2025 - 2.30-3.30pm
Location: GLT2, Warwick Medical School (In-person only)
This seminar is free to attend but please register for catering purposes
Professor Lisa Dikomitis
Professor Lisa Dikomitis is a Belgian-Cypriot medical anthropologist and applied health researcher. She is the Director of the Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, the largest health research unit in Kent, with over 70 externally funded researchers and professional service colleagues. She is also Co-Director of Research at the Kent and Medway Medical School. Professor Dikomitis will join Warwick Medical School from 1 May 2025, as Director of Warwick Applied Health.
Professor Dikomitis was awarded over £24 million from UK funding bodies, of which over £9 million as lead investigator (including global health programmes ECLIPSE and ORI, and lead for qualitative and mixed-methods research in clinical trials, including PROMPPT and THEHOPE). After completing significant ethnographic work on refugee issues and displacement, she expanded her research beyond social anthropology to engage with timely issues in applied health research, working both in the UK and the Global South. Her work is characterized by generating bridges and the developing robust collaborations between different academic disciplines, working with colleagues in biomedicine, social sciences and humanities. Professor Dikomitis has pioneered new and transformative ways of conducting interdisciplinary applied health research, underpinned by culturally appropriate and context-bespoke community engagement (e.g., SOLACE and INTERACT). She published over 90 peer-reviewed publications, including a monograph and edited volumes. Strongly committed to communicating health research publicly, she curated several exhibitions and podcasts, and regularly writes for non-academic audiences.
More info: https://research.kent.ac.uk/chss/person/lisa-dikomitis/