NOTA BIOGRAFICA: CHINA MILLS
China Mills
China’s research traces different facets of the global mental health
assemblage. She explores the ways diagnoses travel and circulate around the
world, and what happens when issues such as distress, suicide, or terrorism get
framed as global public health challenges. Her work looks into how the
psy-disciplines and psychotropic drugs function in local and global contexts of
entrenched inequality, chronic poverty, (neo)colonial oppression, border
imperialism, and increasingly under the politics of austerity. China also
carries out critical research into suicides linked to welfare reform, economic
reform, immigration detention, and corporate practices, and is a member of the
Critical Suicide Studies Network.
China is the Principal Investigator on a British Academy grant looking
at the ‘social life’ (production, circulation, use and resistance) of global mental
health technologies designed to be used all over the world. She was also
Principal Investigator on a previous British Academy grant researching the use
of behaviour change technologies in India, South Africa and Australia. China’s
funding enables her to work alongside Dr Eva Hilberg, a postdoctoral
researcher, also based at City.
In 2014, China published the book ‘Decolonizing Global Mental Health:
the Psychiatrization of the Majority World’ (Routledge), which draws on
research with NGOs and user-survivor organisations in India, and analyses
global mental health policies as forms of colonial discourse. Since her book,
she has published widely in leading journals, including: Critical Public
Health; Globalization and Health; Critical Sociology Policy; and Sociology of
Health and Illness. China's research has been featured in the Indian Express,
Discover Society, the Conversation, Mad in Asia, and the Weeks Centre for
Social Policy.
Research grants:
1. China is Principal Investigator on a project funded by the British
Academy (with co-researchers, Dr Eva Hilberg and Dr Elise Klein) into
"Psy-technologies as global assemblage: histories and social lives of
quantification and digitisation in three former countries of the British
Empire" (IC2\100163) (Feb 2018-June 2019). This research explores the
historical conditions of possibility for specific psy-technologies in three
countries of the former British Empire. It looks at how psy-technologies are
embedded in wider global assemblages (national infrastructures, inter/national
actors and norms, and funding architectures). We look at the ways
psy-technologies act as dimensions of global coloniality, exploring the
visibilities that postcolonial analysis brings to the technological mediation
of global/local relations.
2. China was PI on a British Academy funded project into "Changing
behavior through technology: therapeutic culture and the digital
revolution" (IC160362) (March 2017-Feb 2018). This project analysed the
social life and cultural biographies (production, use, appropriation and
resistance) of digital technologies for behaviour change through three case
studies in India, South Africa and Australia. The study explored the ways that
mental health is made to 'count' globally through the intersections of
technology and quantification.
3. In 2016-17, China was PI on a research project into critical
approaches to Global Mental Health, funded by Sheffield Institute for
international Development.
4. China is co-investigator on an ISRF Flexible Grants for Small Groups,
with Dr Reima Ana Maglajlic, at University of Sussex - researching mental
health user groups in post conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Teaching:
China teaches on
the Masters in Public Health (MPH). Her teaching philosophy is rooted in the
respect of student diversity and the co-creation of knowledge within the
learning environment, and she is actively involved in work to decolonise
curricula within health and the social sciences. China has supported a diverse
range of students, many of whom have English as an additional language,
experience mental health issues, and/or have additional needs. China enjoys
supporting her students to write for publication, and has co-authored journal papers
and book chapters, and co-presented at conferences, with a number of students.
Qualifications
1. PhD, Manchester Metropolitan
University, United Kingdom, Sep 2009 – Dec 2012
Postgraduate
training
1. Certificate in Learning and Teaching
(CiLT), University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Employment
1. Senior Lecturer in Public Health,
City, University of London, Feb 2019 – present
2. Lecturer in Critical Educational
Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sep 2014 – Jan 2019
3. Research officer, University of
Oxford, Mar 2013 – Aug 2014
