Raphaela Berding

I am passionate about working with refugees and asylum seekers and I have worked and volunteered with charities that support forced migrants in the UK since 2018. My PhD thesis in Sociology at Newcastle University explores home, homemaking and belonging for forced migrants in the North East of England.

I am broadly interested in questions relating to home, belonging, identities and agency in the context of forced migration, as well as in participatory methods and taking a subjective approach to research through amplifying voices of marginalised communities.

As part of my role at the Institute for Social Justice, I am currently doing research with colleagues across disciplines in different projects with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, as well as community organisations. For example, I am doing research at York St John's Haxby Road allotments to examine the impact of green social prescribing on the mental health and wellbeing of ethnically diverse communities. This research is participatory and in taking a bottom-up approach it seeks to emphasise those voices of communities and individuals that are often marginalised despite their involvement in these activities. In doing so, this research seeks to challenge status-quo approaches to measuring mental health and wellbeing. As part of this, I am also involved in participatory research with 5 community organisations in Hull that are also running green social prescribing projects, to develop an evaluation tool for their activities. I am also collaborating with colleagues on research which is funded by Institute for Social Justice community research grants.

I am also a member of the ARRC (asylum seeker and refugee research collective) at York St John.