I am a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the West of Scotland. I am also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE). Previously, I worked as an Equality and Human Rights Education Project Manager with NHS Lothian; a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull; and, before that, for over 10 years as a lawyer across human rights and other areas of law in Namibia, where I am from.

My research interests are interwoven through human rights, life after human trafficking and modern slavery for women, women's journeys after domestic violence, intersectionality, motherhood, decoloniality, anti-racism, diaspora experiences, return migration, Ubuntu and Black Joy, belonging, and literature by African women and women of African descent: all strands from one spine, people's lived experiences of structures and inequality.

My research is centred on lived experience. I am interested in human experience, especially after exiting situations of precarity: how people navigate structures and systems often not built to accommodate them, and how they find pockets of joy and resources of resilience. In studying lived experience, I analyse my own experiences too, at the intersection of race, motherhood and being a migrant in the United Kingdom.

My work is informed by the African philosophy of Ubuntu, often expressed as "I am because you/we are", which emphasises our intrinsic interconnectedness as human beings and that we are nothing without one another. I pair Ubuntu with African Storytelling methodologies, and when I analyse my own lived experiences alongside wider cultural, social and systemic phenomena, I use autoethnography. Much of my work is informed by Black feminist theory, especially as theorised by bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Y. Davis, Sylvia Tamale, Audre Lorde and many other phenomenal Black Women.

Research that elevates voice, uncovers hidden experiences and makes a difference for people is what I aim to achieve, and I am happy to collaborate with anyone interested in this or similar research goals.

Omunhu Omunhu molwa Ovanhu/a person is a person because of other people!