Dr Tanisha Spratt is a medical sociologist whose research centres on the relationship between self-presentation, neoliberalism and health outcomes amongst marginalised groups. Tanisha’s research particularly focuses on the role of neoliberalism in promoting and sustaining understandings of personal responsibility, deservedness and grievability when it comes to health and illness. Her most recent project, “The Health Costs of Colourism in Black British Communities: Stress, Inequality and Everyday Racism,” considers the relationship between racism-induced stress and poor health outcomes for Black British women by examining how perceptions of skin colour influence those health outcomes. Tanisha’s forthcoming book Ungrievable Lives: Race, Risk and Responsibility in Neoliberal Societies (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) considers the role of racialised perceptions of fault in determining disparate health outcomes and mortality rates amongst Black and Minority Ethnic groups in the UK and US.

Tanisha gained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2019 and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford from 2019-2021. She is currently a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Greenwich.