Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh is a Research Associate and Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB) Coordinator at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health (CSMH). She holds an Hons BA (History and Political Science) from the University of Toronto, an MA (History of Ideas) from Birkbeck, University of London, and a DPhil (History of Medicine) from the University of Oxford.

Rhea joined King’s College London in May 2024 to support the CSMH Lived Experience Advisory Board to further shape the Centre’s strategic priorities and direction, undertake collaborations with researchers and pursue impactful research on mental health from a lived experience perspective. She is also working as a researcher on the SEMANTIC Project, a survivor-controlled research study exploring the terms that people use to describe having lived experience of violence, trauma and/or abuse.

Research interests

• History of Medicine
• History of Sexuality
• Public Engagement with sensitive and challenging research
• Arts-based co-production, collaborations and partnership working
• Lived Experience Involvement
• Ethics and researcher wellbeing

Teaching

Rhea is a trained historian and experienced public engagement professional and has previously worked at Oxford running a Public Engagement Summer School for doctoral students and ECRs in the Humanities, designed Birkbeck’s Public Engagement Awards Scheme, and was Public Engagement Lead for The SHaME Project at Birkbeck, University of London. She has also taught and supervised undergraduate students in the history of medicine at Oxford and Imperial College London.

Expertise and public engagement 

Rhea is an experienced public engagement professional, with experience in capacity-building, researcher training and development, developing and stewarding engagement partnerships, and designing and delivering ethical public engagement projects with sensitive research. She is a Steering Committee Member of the Challenging Research Network and Co-Chair of the London PEN (London Public Engagement Network). She has also delivered talks and training.