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’s title was, “Asha[1]: Co-producing abortion knowledge & impact outputs with lay community health intermediaries in India”. This project extended my doctoral research on women’s abortion experiences in India, translating findings and analyses for public engagement and impact.

The project utilised visual methods to produce visual resources for use in trainings, advocacy, and policy influencing efforts. All resources will be made publicly available for use.

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.

• I continue to work closely with the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership to co-produce visual resources. We’ve completed initial proofs and are currently finalising resources for launch and further dissemination, including translating them. In addition to graphic essays, we are producing videos and other materials. These were presented and piloted at the Abortion and Reproductive Justice Conference, 2024.

• I discussed some of the key questions and ideas around visualising abortion narratives with Professor Ernestina Coast at a Research Showcase on 20/10/2021. Watch here.

• I co-authored, with Dr Cordelia Freeman, a manuscript based on visualising abortion narratives for MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture. The open access article is available here, and I wrote about this for my publications diary.

Apart from producing visual resources, over the course of the project I aimed to:

• Develop two grants for submission [completed. four rejected]

• Submit three academic articles for publication [completed. Four articles published, two forthcoming, and three in preparation]

• Organise a conference panel focusing on methodological interventions [organised a strand on qualitative research at BSPS2021, also organised a strand on gender and development at DSA 2021]

• Edit a special issue on abortion [completed, co-Guest Editor for Frontiers Research Topic, ‘Consequences, challenges, and adaptation to abortion care throughout and beyond COVID-19’]

[1] Translation, Hindi: hope.