In December 2021, I completed my ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science. I was mentored by Dr Flora Cornish. The fellowship was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council.

The project, “Asha[1]: Co-producing abortion knowledge & impact outputs with lay community health intermediaries in India”, extended my doctoral research on women’s abortion experiences in India; translating findings and analyses for public engagement and impact. COVID-19 disrupted my original plans, particularly around co-production but I was able to continue working on my (adapted) research plans. These included building on graphic medicine and visual anthropological approaches to visualise abortion narratives in India.

Working collaboratively with the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership, the project centred on co-producing visual resources for use in training, advocacy, and policy engagement. These outputs—including graphic narratives, videos, and other visual materials—draw on feminist and participatory approaches to knowledge production, foregrounding lived experiences and community-based expertise. 

Methodologically, the project engaged visual and creative approaches, including graphic medicine and visual anthropology, to explore how abortion narratives can be represented and communicated beyond conventional academic and policy formats. In doing so, it examined how knowledge travels across contexts, and how different forms of representation shape what becomes visible, legitimate, and actionable. 

This work contributes to my broader research programme by developing feminist, co-produced approaches to knowledge-making, and by examining how abortion care is organised not only through formal systems, but through relational networks and community-based infrastructures of care.

I explore some of this in a co-authored publication with Dr Cordelia Freeman, where we discuss visualising abortion narratives. The open access article is available here, and I wrote about this for my publications diary.

[1] Translation, Hindi: hope.