Dr Nikita Simpson

Nikita is a Reader in Anthropology and the Co-Director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). Nikita’s research is focused on the structural and relational dimensions of mental distress, and the ways in which inequality comes to be embodied in the home and the environment.  

Nikita is the author of Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas, published with Duke University Press in 2026, in their Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography series. In Tension, Nikita examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.” She puts forth a novel theory of distress, that inequality is often determined by who is made to feel, hold, and absorb distress.  

The foundational research for this book was conducted with Shyam Lal Kapoor and Soujanyaa Boruah, who together form ‘Project Tension’. They use artistic and ethnographic methods to explore ecological distress in the Himalayan region, supported by the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art. Their work has been exhibited in Delhi, London and Dundee. Nikita’s academic writings on ‘Project Tension’ can also be found in the JRAI and MAQ, amongst other venues.  

Since 2021, Nikita has also led an engaged ethnographic project on housing distress in the UK with collaborators, counselling psychologist Suad Duale and geographer, Elizabeth Storer. Focused on the experiences of Somali mothers in Eastern Birmingham, this project explored psychic and embodied experiences of temporary accommodation, mould and damp for racialised groups. This research produced an influential report, Listening to Housing Distress, two co-produced films, policy briefs, BBC news appearances and a number of papers published in Society and Space, Social Science and Medicine and Cultural Anthropology. Through the Housing, Migration and Health Lab, which Nikita initiated with Charlotte Sanders, the group has hosted public conversations on mould and damp.  

Nikita completed her doctoral studies at the London School of Economics (2021). Nikita’s doctoral work has been awarded a number of prizes, including the Alfred Gell Prize, the Rosemary and Raymond Firth Prize, and the Firth Prize. Prior to joining SOAS, Nikita was a Postdoctoral Research Officer in the Department of Anthropology at LSE, where she was involved in the EU-Horizon funded Periscope project. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she worked with Prof. Laura Bear to establish the Covid and Care Research Group, an intergenerational collective of researchers who have influenced policy on Covid-19 at the highest levels of government in the UK and the EU. Their research is published in the BMJ Global Health and Critical Social Policy. Nikita also held the position of Head of Research at the SHM Foundation, where she led the design, implementation and evaluation of psychosocial support programs and co-founded Ember Mental Health. 

Alongside establishing CAMHRA, Nikita is currently working on two new research projects. The first, with Alice Rudge, explores the historical origins of the emergent field of ‘environ-mental health’. The second, with Elizabeth Storer, on mental health in the asset economy in the UK and Australia, through her visiting fellowship at the University of Sydney Policy Lab.  

India, South Asia, UK, Southern Africa, Mental health, HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Digital health, Feminist anthropology, Care, Aging, Inequality, Stigma, Covid-19 pandemic policy, Participatory and co-design methods.