Email: runa.lazzarino@stmarys.ac.uk
Biography
Dr Runa Lazzarino has been an honorary fellow of the Centre since 201X? She is one of the editors of the forthcoming book Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery: The Victim’s Journey. Runa took the lead in managing this project, and is a key member of the work of the Centre.
She started investigating recovery/reintegration processes and care/assistance discourses and practices for vulnerable migrants and human trafficking survivors in 2008. Her current research interests revolve around: global (mental) health, cultural psychiatry, and transcultural health/care – both research and interventions; the relationship between violence/abuse/exploitation and subject/sense making, in particular by looking at mental and sexual health; culture, social norms, discourses and structural determinants of health(care) and migration; creative expressions as means of research and healing.
Social groups of focus are vulnerable migrants (i.e., victims of human trafficking and refugees), and vulnerable groups/minorities more generally; methodologically, interest is for participatory, interdisciplinary, creative works, and multimodal ethnography, within the framework of policy-oriented and impactful projects. Theoretically, leading viewpoint is from critical medical anthropology, attentive to power relations, post-colonial discourses, epistemology, intersectionality, and humanitarianism.
Runa obtained her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Milano-Bicocca in 2015. In her doctorate project, she conducted a multi-stakeholder and multi-country ethnography (Northern Vietnam, Central West Brazil, and Nepal) concentrating on post-trafficking recovery and humanitarian assistance.
Subsequently, Runa was research associate within the project SEATIDE - Integration in Southeast Asia: Trajectories of Inclusion, Dynamics of Exclusion (EC 7th FP), fellow at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies and in the Rights Lab (UoN), and in these positions she has concentrated on different aspects of post-trafficking/slavery mental health/care and reintegration.
Runa is now based at the Research Centre for Transcultural Studies in Health (MDX), where she is also involved in projects on refugee parenting, spirituality, and culturally competent social robots in health/care. Runa has also experience as consultant in psycho-social and cultural renovations interventions, projects' M&E and management.
Runa’s publications can be accessed through Researchgate.