Ethical Representation of Vulnerable Communities
Storytelling shapes perception, policy, funding, trust, and power.
Across the humanitarian and development sectors, organisations are increasingly recognising that traditional approaches to representing vulnerable communities can reinforce harm, exclusion, and unequal power dynamics.
Drawing on experience across broadcasting, NGOs, and international development, I support organisations to build communications approaches that uphold dignity, strengthen participation, build community trust, and support more ethical systems of representation without compromising public engagement or institutional impact.
I am particularly interested in exploring independent infrastructures for community narrative accountability outside institutional control. A multi-layer civic infrastructure for documenting, analysing, and addressing harms in representation and storytelling — moving from community testimony to institutional accountability. What is Narrative Accountability?
Photos at the top are courtesy of Xavier Verhoest taken during a body mapping workshop in Somalia and Steven Oola recording songs of war in Uganda as part of Performing Violence Engendering Peace project supported by UKRI. Photo of street is my own taken inside Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut as part of the project Following the Wires funded by the AHRC, which led to the documentary feature film “About a War” (2019). .