Cassandra Lovelock
Qualitative Research Assistant
Contact details
Pronouns
She/They
Biography
Cassandra (Cassie) Lovelock is a Research Assistant at the ESRC Centre for Society & Mental Health and a forming member of the Centre's Lived Experience Advisory Board. Cassie is currently working on a qualitative study funded by ESRC titled 'Understanding mental health in the UK welfare system'.
Cassie is also currently completing her PhD at the London School of Economics where she is conceptualising a theory of indirect lived experience in mental health research, service design/improvement and policy making. Asking how we make space for the friends and family of those living with mental illness/distress and disability and advocating for parity of knowledge. She also spends a significant amount of time in NHS England’s adult mental health policy and quality transformation teams.
Cassie is passionate about making sure voices that are rejected by traditional academic structures are given parity of knowledge, working intensely with activist, artist, and lived experience voices. Her understanding of knowledge is rooted in lived experiences and communities generating their own collective and personal understanding of different phenomena which academic structures can never truly understand. Due to this through her work in the lived experience advisory board, she has attempted embed co-productive principles in both the Centres and its partner’s work.
Research Interests
- Ethical mental health policy making
- Mental health service quality transformation and service improvement
- Race, racialised bodies and mental health
- Disability
- Unpaid care
Publications:
Lovelock, C., Dewar, E., (2023) Being the Disabled PhD., the psychologist
Lovelock, C., (2022). Disability discourse stuck in a Black/White binary: Embodying Black and disabled identity as a Mixed-race person. In Paul Bones (Ed). Redefining Disability, BRILL (2022).
Lovelock, C., (2021) “Brighter Futures: What’s next for mental health research?” Presentation at MQ Mental Health Science Summit in Collaboration with Wellcome Trust, May 2021
This Disability Download Podcast: Podcast: how has the pandemic impacted disabled students? | Leonard Cheshire
Self-Injury Support UK Blog Post: Why I find the Warrior Narrative Boring | Self Injury Support
Research
Service User Research Enterprise
The Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) undertakes research that examines mental health services from the perspectives of those that use them, explores empirically and conceptually the impact of service user involvement in research (in terms of both process and outcomes), and critically interrogates how service users have changed knowledge production globally.
Understanding mental health in the UK welfare system: representations of distress among working-age benefit claimants and their implications for assessment and support
A qualitative exploration of UK benefits claimants' understanding of mental distress and how this affects interactions with welfare and employment systems.
Project status: Ongoing
Features
We need a ceasefire in the welfare system
An insight from ongoing research into how the welfare benefits system could be improved to better support people with health conditions and disabilities.
Research
Service User Research Enterprise
The Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) undertakes research that examines mental health services from the perspectives of those that use them, explores empirically and conceptually the impact of service user involvement in research (in terms of both process and outcomes), and critically interrogates how service users have changed knowledge production globally.
Understanding mental health in the UK welfare system: representations of distress among working-age benefit claimants and their implications for assessment and support
A qualitative exploration of UK benefits claimants' understanding of mental distress and how this affects interactions with welfare and employment systems.
Project status: Ongoing
Features
We need a ceasefire in the welfare system
An insight from ongoing research into how the welfare benefits system could be improved to better support people with health conditions and disabilities.