Dr Ayesha Ahmad holds a PhD in medical ethics and works to integrate ethics and the humanities into global health research and pedagogy. Her research expertise is in transcultural psychiatry and cross-cultural mental health. She particularly work in contexts of conflict and humanitarian crisis resulting from disasters including environmental change. Dr Ahmad develops trauma therapeutic interventions using traditional storytelling and worked in collaboration with Afghanistan, Tunisia, South Africa, Kashmir and Turkey. She has a particular commitment in reframing self-immolation in Afghanistan as a form of protest not pathology.

Dr Ahmad’s specialisation is in psychological trauma and the ethical consequences of concepts that are used in mental health. She has developed both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in culture and mental health. In her work, Dr Ahmad critically explores the notion of land trauma, as it is juxtaposed with a medicalised and biomedical paradigm of a temporal understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. At City St Georges University of London, Dr Ahmad has established a programme in  “Transcultural Mental Health Humanities” to bring together scholars and students using humanities-based methodologies to approach and respond to global health inequities and injustice. Dr Ahmad also works as an Expert Witness providing academic reports on asylum seeker cases related to war, mental health, and gender-based violence.