I started my PhD with the transtechnology research group in January 2021 after a journey of 19 years working on the implementation of the UN sustainable development conventions and taking part in the response to humanitarian crises around the world. During that time, I nurtured my desire to accompany births and finally certified as a doula a few years ago. I believe that these seemingly different callings have a commonality that lies in our cultural relationship to what Bergson calls l’élan vital, the life force. I continue working on gender and environment projects globally, lecture in universities in Germany, work in a Black feminist charity in Devon and co-founded a local project called Mother Roots with Transition Town Totnes.
Inspired by ecofeminism, post-humanism, midwifery and sustainability science, my journey led me to explore the moment of birth, that liminal state of transformation. Using post-ANT (Actor Network Theory) and the method of Microphenomenology, I investigate what is happening in the birthing room between the material and the intangible, culture and technology, what matters and what is forgotten. I ask: what is our cultural relationship to life’s regenerative processes? what does birth tell us about our relationship to earth’s supporting systems? This led me to author A scenography of inscriptions and intangibles in the birthing room as part of the transtechnology research reader 2022/2023, Tending the margins: learnings from the birthing body as a membrane in the reader 2023/2024. I am hoping to finalise the microphenomenological interviews in 2025 and discover what happens to the consciousness of birthing women when a new life emerges.
As part of my research fellowships in the Arts and Health for the University of Plymouth. I co-authored in 2024 Sublime and extended reality experiences to enhance emotional wellbeing for autistic people: A state of the art review and narrative synthesis published in the International Journal of Psychiatry and in 2022, A co-design solution for digital literacy in health care with the Torbay and South Devon NHS foundation trust.
At the end of 2021, I developed this poster; since then my enquiry and explorations have continued.
I am a Moroccan-German-Luxembourg national – an Afroeuropean – navigating the borderlands of identities, languages and disciplines. I am interested in collaborations around embodied performances of intangible systems in particular from an endarkened feminist perspective. Do contact me if you feel called to or would like more information: