Rachel Rowan Olive

I support the day-to-day running of the QUAHRC, edit the Qualitative Open Mic podcast, and co-produced our Neurodiversity Matters series.

I’m a survivor researcher, meaning I use my lived experiences of mental health difficulties and neurodivergence to shape my work. I came to health research as a participant first, when my local Healthwatch ran a project documenting experiences of funding cuts to a day centre which I was attending. So research for me has always contained a political element: now my healthcare experiences and research inform and are informed by community organising outside of work.

I have an MA in Applied Linguistics, during which I worked with multilingual voice-hearers to explore their experiences. I also work as a lived experience researcher with the Mental Health Policy Research Unit, where I have a particular interest in neurodiversity-affirming approaches to mental health care.

I am now an ESRC-funded graduate student on a 1+3 programme, meaning that I am taking an MSc prior to a funded PhD. My MSc dissertation explores harm in the healthcare system as experienced by people with eating disorders, and its relationship to suicidality, as a follow up to an MQ-funded project. My PhD research will look at experiences of suicide loss among people who use mental health services together.