Zenab Barry is a political scientist and international development specialist with a strong commitment to maternal health equity, mental health, and meaningful community involvement in research. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Women & Children’s Health at King’s College London, with interests spanning maternal health, PPIE, co-production, and health inequalities. She previously held a Visiting Research Fellow role within the same department (from September 2023 to September 2025) and has returned in a research capacity.

Zenab has collaborated with institutions including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust and NHS England. From 2020 to 2022, she served as Chair of the National Maternity Voices Council and subsequently as a Director until February 2024. From August 2025 to July 2026, she was a Senior Patient and Public Involvement Officer on the FRAIYA Study, an AI-assisted ultrasound research project based at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering.

She is an active member of the Maternal and Perinatal Systems and Policy (MAPS) group and leads PPIE (Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement) for the No Recourse to Public Funds Programme.

Zenab is also Founder and CEO of Canvas Bridge Ltd, a UK-registered for-profit social impact organisation working across the UK, Guinea, and internationally to strengthen maternal and mental health systems through strategy, systems thinking, lived experience, and knowledge exchange.

An author, poet and storyteller, she has published My African Childhood: Growing Up in Guinea and Lessons From Depression. Her interdisciplinary work brings together political science, international development, maternal health and lived experience to support more equitable and culturally responsive health systems.

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