King's College London

The Academy of Social Sciences is the national academy of academics, practitioners and learned societies in the social sciences. It exists to promote the social sciences in the UK for public benefit, and to showcase, champion and advocate for the social sciences and their applications, raising awareness – in policy, business and with the public – of their immense value in understanding and managing our contemporary human world, and helping to secure their flourishing future.

The Academy’s Fellowship comprises 1,600 leading social scientists from academia, the public, private and third sectors. The Fellows’ expertise covers the breadth of the social sciences, and their practice and research addresses some of the major challenges facing communities, society, places and economies. All Academy Fellows are elected for their excellence in their fields and their substantial contributions to social science for public benefit. Selection is through an independent peer review which recognises their excellence and impact.

The new Fellows have been elected from 32 UK organisations, comprising 28 Higher Education Institutions, as well as think tanks, non-profits and business, and overseas institutions.

Professor Stephani Hatch is a Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology within the Department of Psychological Medicine and Vice Dean for Culture, Diversity and Inclusion at the IoPPN.

Professor Hatch joined King’s in 2006, and leads the Health Inequalities Research Group working across sectors, locally and nationally, to deliver interdisciplinary research on inequalities in mental health in marginalised communities and across health services with an emphasis on race at the intersection of other social identities. She has expertise in sociology and psychiatric epidemiology, using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to study the impact of discrimination, social adversity, social determinants over the life course on mental health and multimorbidity.

Stephani's work integrates collaborative and inclusive approaches to knowledge production, dissemination and action across capacity building, education and training, impact strategies and research. She holds local and national policy advisory roles across the health and social care sector and voluntary and community sector. Stephani has also been co-leading initiatives promoting and changing policies to insure the embeddedness of inclusive research culture, equality, diversity and inclusion at KCL since 2014.

Stephani is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (TIDES) study which was initially funded by Wellcome. She is also PI on the Wellcome Discovery Award funded 'Collective Action for Race Equity in Health and Social Care (CARE-HSC)' programme, a £4.7m, 7-year study funded in January 2025. Stephani co-leads the Marginalised Communities and Mental Health programme within the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, focused on working in close partnership with communities that have often been ignored, to examine and disrupt structures maintaining social inequities in mental health. She is PI for the CONNECT study (CONtributions of social NEtworks to Community Thriving) which uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) to investigate social capital and networks as resources that benefit (or hinder) marginalised communities and their mental health. It focuses primarily on Black and other minoritised groups, with an intersectional focus accounting for gender, migration, socio-economic status, and more.

Stephani co-leads the Narrowing Inequalities Platform within the UKRI Population Health Improvement (PHI-UK), Population Mental Health Consortium, bringing together 10+ partnerships across universities, local government, voluntary organisations and people with lived experience, to understand what can be done to prevent the onset of mental health problems, using insights from large-scale linked data. The consortium focusses on three challenge areas: children and young people, suicide and self-harm prevention, and multiple long-term conditions.