Sam is a PhD student investigating state powers and social injustice within the police and schools and the mental health of young people in inner-city London. Sam’s project focuses on the history of and inequalities within police powers to stop and search, school suspensions, and school exclusions in England.

Sam received her BA in Criminology from the School of Law, University of Manchester in 2013 and her MSc in Global Mental Health from King’s College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2020. She has been a researcher on the school-based Resilience, Ethnicity and Adolescent Mental Health (REACH) cohort study since 2017.

Sam is co-recipient of the Wellcome Data Prize in Mental Health 2022-23 for the Project: The Impact of Stop and Search on Young Black People’s Mental Health.  She has also presented project findings to the Lambeth Youth Justice Partnership Board (YJPB)

Research

Thesis title: Social injustice, police contact, and school exclusions: the mental health implications among diverse groups of young people in inner-city London'

• Policing and powers to stop and search
• School suspensions and permanent exclusions
• Social injustice and inequities
• Adolescent mental health
• Structural racism, classism, and postcolonialism

Teaching

• Statistics for Mental Health Research
• Epidemiology for Mental Health Research