Other Writing
Writing that reaches beyond the academy to the communities it serves. Articles on motherhood, disability, race, and challenging the systems that fail our children.
Black Ballad · 2021
Examining how authoritarian "behaviour management" in schools — isolation units, calling detained pupils "detainees", mass detentions — mirrors carceral systems and creates pathways from classroom to prison, particularly for Black children. Questioning whether Ofsted's celebration of these approaches serves Black pupils or social control.
Black Ballad (in partnership with NHS England's 'Help Us Help You' campaign) · 2021
On navigating pregnancy and early motherhood during lockdown — the isolation, the fear, the simultaneous knowing and not knowing. Drawing on personal experience and interviews with new mothers, offering practical support for perinatal mental health when the world feels uncertain.
HuffPost UK (Black Ballad takeover) · 2020
On refusing the exhausting performance of "balance" and the patriarchal expectation that mothers should keep all the plates spinning. Written during the pandemic about panic attacks, emotional labour, and choosing to smash the plates instead.
Black Ballad · 2020
Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Drawing on personal experience of a difficult first birth, this piece makes the case for why doula support isn't a luxury but essential advocacy and care for Black mothers navigating a system that fails us.
Black Ballad · 2019
On considering home education for my Black son in a system where Black children are excluded at nearly three times the rate of white children. Written as a former primary teacher who left the profession stressed, overworked, and disempowered — questioning whether I could trust schools with my child's wellbeing.
Black Ballad · 2017
Looking around baby massage classes, NCT groups, and "trendy" parenting spaces in gentrifying areas, asking: where are all the Black mothers? On being the only person of colour in middle-class motherhood spaces, microaggressions about my son's "wild" hair, and how gentrification erases Black mothers from mainstream narratives of parenting.