My name is Jodie, and I am a recent Manchester Metropolitan University, Psychology with Counselling and Psychotherapy Graduate. I aspire to become a Health Psychologist researching how socioeconomic status and gender impacts access to adequate healthcare.

Mapping the Meal Gap is a collaborative project exploring how people experiencing homelessness make sense of and navigate food access in their daily lives. Being a part of this project has given me experience in rapid, but thorough, literature reviews, scouring large databases for relevant and valuable material; team report writing, without stepping on each other’s toes; and participatory research methods, truly understanding the importance of speaking to those with lived experience, as I find the power imbalances in academic research uncomfortable. I have questioned, “What good is my voice for those experiencing extreme housing and food poverty, when I have never experienced it?”. I co-delivered a workshop with Sophia at Expert Citizens where people with lived experience of homelessness and food insecurity and student researchers discussed common themes from the literature. I loved how one sentence from our research findings could spark a passionate spew of additional information from someone with lived experience. This further highlighted a theme we found which was that people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity are often treated like they don’t know what they need, they couldn’t possibly fathom the intricacies of their situation and need us academics to help them, give them words, and a way out. In fact, these people know exactly what they need, how we could help, and how to describe their situation, they just need us to listen and act. After co-creating a list of ideas to address challenges experienced by people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity, we all were given green, orange, and red stickers, to vote on what our priorities should be. I marched over to one idea to put a green sticker on it, thinking it was the best one, and yet I saw someone come over and put a red sticker next to it. Admittedly, for a second, I felt frustrated. Had I not sufficiently explained why this is a good idea? How can I change their mind? However, after a moment of reflection, I realised I had just experienced, in real time, how academics internalise a sense of superiority. The reason we were all given stickers is to give everyone an equal vote. My vote did not, nor should it, matter more than anyone else’s. This was a collaborative exercise to see clearly where our energy should be focused. Some ideas were completely red, some completely green, most were a mix of all. Conversations should not be had about how to help a group of people, without including those people and holding their voices in equal regard. I have research expertise, you have lived experience, let’s use our skills together to best communicate our message and reach our goal.     Click here For more information on the Mapping the Meal Gap Project. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]