Selected Experience & Partnership Highlights
Sankaa vzw
From research to repair
At the close of Racism Unravelled, I joined Sankaa’s team to help translate research into understanding and practice. Working alongside Dr. Evodia Uggi and Dr. Edna Lamnteh, we presented findings and facilitated learning with universities, public institutions and professional teams, creating space to examine how racism is experienced, reproduced and responded to in everyday life.
That work later extended into consultation with Safe Harbour, Sankaa’s response to the need for spaces where people with African roots could speak about racial harm while exploring belonging, healing, connection and ways of restoring inner steadiness. It brought another dimension to my practice: not only understanding the structures around us, but asking what helps people remain connected to themselves while moving through them.
My contribution: end-phase data analysis • co-presentations and facilitated learning • healing-centred education design • Safe Harbour consultation and reflective practice.
Impact: clearer language for naming harm • practical tools for institutional learning • spaces for reflection, recognition and connection • continued movement from research towards culturally responsive practice.
Themes: cultural wellbeing • African belonging & representation • race, history & structural awareness • healing-centred practice • inner leadership, peace & steadiness.
If your organisation is exploring how research, lived experience and culturally responsive practice can meet, I’d be glad to start a conversation.
Vives University
Widening the lens of social work
Dr. Edna Lamnteh and I led an inspiration workshop drawn from Sankaa vzw’s Racism Unravelled research and methodology. We we invited by Vives to inspire Social Work students to look beyond traditional support services and read the patterns behind the cases—to see how systems, power, and policy shape everyday need. We practised strategies that address inequality at its roots, empower marginalised groups, and connect care work to community organising and institutional change.
My contribution: co-design, facilitated dialogue, and embodied reflection linking data to lived experience.
Impact: students named structural drivers, mapped local examples to broader systems, and identified concrete actions for advocacy and practice.
Themes: cultural wellbeing • history, power & inequality • reflective practice • care beyond the individual • inner leadership & social responsibility
If your Social Work programme is ready to bridge research and practice, please download Sankaa vzw’s Final Report and get in touch.
Community building - breaking the myth of race & privilege
Breaking the myth, building the community circle
Daria Nashat (women in politics) and I met on LinkedIn and, when we finally sat together in real life, we became each other’s steady cheerleaders. Out of that friendship grew our monthly R&P Circle — a virtual gathering for people who feel out of step with the prevailing stories about race and privilege in their everyday lives.
Each month we hold space for truth-telling and repair: we listen, practice compassion, share language and boundaries, and choose small actions that make a real difference. Over time the circle has become a community of practice—less alone, more resourced, and more courageous in the places where it counts: families, classrooms, teams, and neighbourhoods.
My contribution: co-founding, co-facilitation, design of healing-centred prompts and resource packs.
Impact: reduced isolation, clearer language, and concrete next steps; recurring attendance and spin-off dialogues.
Themes: cultural wellbeing • belonging & connection • race, privilege & power • listening across difference • inner leadership & community care
If you’d like an R&P Circle for your campus, team, or network, I’d love to build it with you.
Avansa - Oost Brabant, Leuven
De Conversaties - listening where history still lives
After the Congo Commission report stirred debate, KU Leuven researchers named what was left unsaid. De Conversaties invited seven of us to sit together for six Saturdays — a moderated, multi-voiced experiment on Belgium’s colonial past and its present textures. Led by Tiny Alaerts and Philsan Osman, and made public through a podcast by Lisbet Gijsel (journalist, podcastmaker), we practised a different kind of conversation: to speak from our positions, to hear one another across power and to recognise pain without collapsing into roles.
Even among those linked to Congo, our views were not the same; they were shaped by structures as much as stories. The work was to listen until understanding became possible — and to leave a record that others could use.
My contribution: participant
Impact: a podcast series and a living template for communities who want to talk differently about colonial history, responsibility, and repair.
Themes: cultural wellbeing • belonging & representation • colonial history & structural awareness • reflective dialogue • inner leadership & relational repair.
If your campus, city, or cultural centre is ready to host a circle like this, I’d be glad to help shape it.
Learn more: De Conversaties
Artevelde Hogeschool/Ghent University
Bringing research into the therapy room
Through Sankaa vzw, Dr. Evodia Uggi and I were invited to offer an inspiration workshop to Occupational Therapy students and educators. We opened up Racism Unravelled—not only the findings, but the how: the research design, the analysis, and why it matters in everyday practice. Together we examined how culture, power, and bias shape participation, assessment, and care planning.
With case-mapping, embodied reflection, and facilitated dialogue, students practised naming what they see, locating structural drivers, and designing more equitable interventions. The conversation moved beyond “awareness” into applied clinical judgement and supervision culture.
My contribution: co-design, co-facilitation and translation of research into therapeutic contexts; creation of follow-up resources.
Impact: clearer language for complex cases, more responsive care strategies, and interest in extended practice clinics and supervision support.
Themes: racial healing & education • emotional wellbeing in professional learning • diamond clarity & resilience.
If your Occupational Therapy or Social Work programme is ready to bridge research and practice, I’d be glad to design a session with you.
De Toverhazelaar Kinderdagverblijf
learning culture through the everyday rhythms of care
As an Early Years Educator in a Flemish crèche, I cared for babies and toddlers while contributing to child observation, family communication, team reflection and the practical rhythms that hold a care environment together.
The work continually revealed how culture is formed in ordinary moments: welcomes and separations, meals and rest, play and conflict, boundaries, reassurance and repair. It also sharpened my attention to how adult capacity, cultural assumptions and institutional structures shape what children, families and colleagues experience, particularly where African children, families and colleagues encounter gaps in recognition, representation and culturally responsive care.
My contribution: daily care and observation • communication with families • reflective team practice • attention to belonging, cultural assumptions and relational repair.
Impact: deeper insight into how early-years environments transmit culture • stronger awareness of the conditions that support or hinder belonging • a clearer understanding of where care settings can become more responsive to African children, families and colleagues.
Themes: early childhood wellbeing • culture in everyday practice • belonging & representation • reflective care • racial awareness in early-years settings.
If your early-years or care team wants to explore how culture, belonging and care are shaped in the everyday, I’d be glad to design a reflective session with you.