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Websites

Supervisors

Bakita Kasadha

BA (Hons), MA

NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow

  • DPhil investigating how academic health institutions integrate and govern lived expertise through peer and co-research roles
  • Advisory Board Member - QMUL Sexual Health All East Research Group (SHARE) Collaborative
  • Co-applicant - QMUL Partnerships 4 Black People's Health

Researcher shaped by advocacy and community work, examining participation, expertise and institutional authority in health research systems.

Research summary

Bakita Kasadha is a social scientist whose work examines how institutions structure participation, assign authority to different forms of knowledge and govern lived expertise within health and research systems. Her research focuses on institutional design, knowledge politics and participatory practice, with particular interest in how participatory ambitions are operationalised, constrained and contested in organisational settings.

Her NIHR-funded doctoral research investigates how academic health institutions integrate and govern lived expertise through peer and co-research roles, exploring how authority, legitimacy and decision-making are negotiated in participatory research environments. She is an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow, Medical Research Council DTP scholar and Oxford-Reuben Black Academic Futures scholar.

Bakita’s work is shaped by a long-standing background in HIV advocacy, governance and health research, and she brings experience across research, public engagement and strategic advisory work. Before and alongside her doctoral research, she has held leadership and advisory roles in health-related organisations and has built a decade-long track record of invited speaking across research, advocacy and public-facing spaces.

She joined the department as lead researcher on the NOURISH-UK HIV and infant feeding study (PI: Dr Tanvi Rai), which examined how clinical guidance, lived experience and care practices were navigated by parents living with HIV. The study findings went on to inform national policy. Across her broader work, she combines qualitative and arts-based methods with an interest in creative and accessible forms of dissemination, and in how experiential knowledge shapes research, policy and practice.

Teaching experience

  • Patients, Citizens & the Politics of Evidence module - TA and guest lecturer (2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25)
  • UCL Remote Research Methods - Creative Methods panellist (2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25)
  • Oxford Qualitative Research Methods tutor - Introduction to poetic inquiry (2021/22)

  • Brighton and Sussex Medical School guest lecturer - Community engagement in global health research (2019/20 and 2020/21)

  • Brighton and Sussex Medical School guest lecturer - Health service financing arrangements in example countries (2019/20 and 2020/21)

  • Brighton and Sussex Medical School guest lecturer - Community mobilisation and international advocacy for affecting global health (2019/20 and 2020/21)

  • PENTA-ID module co-coordinator -  Adolescents, Sexual Health and Living with HIV (2019/20 and 2021/22)

Qualifications

  • MA Applied Anthology & Community Development,  Department of Anthropology and Department of Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
  • BA (Hons) English Literature with Creative Writing, School of Literature and Languages, University of Surrey, UK.

Special Collection on HIV and Women's Health: Where Are We Now?

Dr Shema Tariq (UCL) and Bakita Kasadha co-edited a special collection on HIV and Women's Health: Where Are We Now? This is a joint collection between the Women's Health journal and Therapeutic Advances in Infectious Disease journal. 

 

Awards

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