Advisory Board

Jumoke Abdullahi

A Nigerian-British force of nature, Jumoke has a great passion for social justice, not least because, her life as a disabled Black woman, literally depends on it. She contracted polio before her first birthday, and does not know a life before it. Owing to the realities of poliomyelitis, and a potential future of post polio syndrome, Jumoke used this as a catalyst to set off and see the world. A self confessed travel addict, she documents her travels through her travel blog Jayonlife and highlights the accessible and (usually) inaccessible aspects of her chosen destinations. When not globetrotting, she is the ambassador for a charity called Star Children Initiative that works to enable and advocate for disabled youths and women in her home nation of Nigeria, as well as providing support for parents here in the UK. Through the work that she does with Triple Cripples, Jumoke is an accomplished writer, speaker, expert lecturer, consultant and professional baby girl.

Kym Oliver

Kym, is dedicated to illuminating her ‘lived experience’ with a long-term condition; examining its psychological, emotional, practical, social, cultural, structural and interpersonal effects. She is a Writer (gal-dem), Speaker (WOW Festival, LSE), Expert Lecturer (University of Oxford, KCL), Sex & Dating aficionado (Inner Hoe Uprising, Long Island Institute of Sex Therapy), ‘Peer-reviewed Vegan Food Critic’, Professional Cackler and the ‘Official Goddess’ for the TRIPLE CRIPPLES (BBC, Metro) – a platform dedicated to highlighting the narratives and increasing the visibility of People of Colour, living with Disability. A deep lover of anime and a UX design student, Kym (allegedly) spends umpteen hours staring at a screen, talking to herself, like she has an audience.

Professor William J Spurlin

William J Spurlin is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brunel University London, and from 2017-2022, he was Vice Dean/Education in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences. Professor Spurlin has written extensively on the politics of gender and sexual dissidence and is widely known for his work in postcolonial queer studies and for examining sexuality as a significant vector of social organisation and cultural arrangement in colonial and postcolonial Africa, under National Socialism, and in the medical humanities. His most recent book Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb (2022) analyses new representations of same-sex desire and sexual dissidence in recent autofictional writing in French from the Maghreb, foregrounding translation and narrative reflexivity around incommensurable spaces of queerness as the writers concerned address their struggles in their negotiations and crossings of multiple languages, histories, cultures and geopolitical borders. His earlier book, Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), the research for which was funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities and a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, examines the politics of sexuality that emerged in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy and its effects in the region. His second monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009) uses queer theory as a hermeneutic tool with which to read against the grain of hetero-textual narratives of the Holocaust and as a way for locating sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, and eugenics within the National Socialist imaginary. The research for Lost Intimacies was funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the book has been widely cited and reviewed in such journals as Men and Masculinities; German Studies Review; International Review of Social History; and Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenscaft. Updating this work, his chapter ‘Queering Holocaust Studies’ was published in the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Holocaust in 2020. Professor Spurlin’s comparative queer work has contributed significantly to the development of queer translation studies as a recognised sphere of inquiry. This is addressed in his more recent publications in the journal Research in African Literatures (2016), a chapter in the volume Queer in Translation (Eds. B.J. Epstein and Robert Gillett, Routledge 2017); and his guest-editorship of a special issue of the journal Comparative Literature Studies (2014) on the gender and queer politics of translation. He also has published in medical humanities, most recently the article ‘Queer Theory and Biomedical Practice: The Biomedicalization of Sexuality/The Cultural Politics of Biomedicine’ in the Journal of Medical Humanities (2019). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of the contribution of his research to social science scholarship, and he is Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in recognition of his work in critical pedagogy and for his strategic leadership in teaching.

Chay Brown

Chay Brown (he/him) is one of the directors at TransActual. He co-founded TransActual UK in 2017 as a response to a notable rise in transphobia in the UK. TransActual work to advocate for trans people in healthcare, policy and law, to empower trans people to self-advocate, and to educate the wider community about the issues impacting trans people's lives.

Professor Alexandra Xanthaki

Alexandra Xanthaki was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights in October 2021. Alexandra Xanthaki is Professor of Laws at Brunel University London, United Kingdom. A leading expert on cultural rights, Alexandra has over 50 publications varying from cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples to cultural diversity, cultural heritage, balancing cultural rights with other rights and interests, and multicultural aspects of international human rights law. Alexandra is Greek and completed her law degree in Athens Law Faculty and qualified as a lawyer. She then moved to the United Kingdom and completed a Masters degree (LLM) in 'Human Rights and Emergency Law' at Queen's University, Belfast. She pursued a doctorate at Keele University, UK, on the 'Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations' under the supervision of Patrick Thornberry. Her work on cultural rights of non-state actors is well-known and has been cited repeatedly in international documents. She has worked on issues relating to human rights with NGOs and civil society. Before taking up the mandate, Alexandra has worked closely with several mandates at the United Nations and has advised several States on human rights issues. She has also taught civil servants and lawyers in several parts of the world, including the Ukraine, Vietnam, South Africa and Malaysia. Alexandra is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (London) and member of the Summer Human Rights Faculty in Oxford. In Brunel University London, she leads the Brunel side in an EU funded project of 13 partners on employing technology to push forward the integration of migrants. She has also worked with colleagues and NGOs to develop a prototype of an online game to advance the rights of children and their integration. Ms. Xanthaki is well known as the founder of the awarded Athens Refugee Project, where students have volunteered since early 2016 with refugee civil society organisations

Kath Burton

Kath (she/her) specialises in development for the humanities and social sciences portfolio at Routledge, Taylor & Francis. With over 15 years’ experience working in scholarly communications Kath has worked in a variety of publishing roles from commissioning and programme management to designing and implementing effective publishing strategies for scholarly societies and journal editorial teams. Kath’s main area of focus is to discover new opportunities for digital, open and public humanities, using human-centred design techniques and deeply embedding within research and practice communities. She co-leads the Publishing and Public Humanities working group. When not working in publishing, Kath co-grows community gardens in Reading, UK.

Dorothea Jones

Co-Director of The Monitoring Group Dorothea has been at The Monitoring Group for over 5 years. She joined as a race advocate. She initially sought assistance as a client from The Monitoring Group when her youngest son was 11 and racially abused in a London primary school. Dorothea has an MA in Woman and Child Abuse from CWASU - (Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit) with specialism in examining the intersections between race, class and gender. She has worked in communities, with young people and survivors of domestic violence. Dorothea co-ordinates The Monitoring Group’s social media team and is involved in various campaigns including Justice for Christopher Kapessa, Save Southall Town Hall, Southall Resists 40 and Hands-off Tudor Rose Campaigns"