I'm head of the secretariat for the Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody, a civil service team which runs a ministerial board and supports an independent expert panel to co-ordinate work to prevent deaths in all forms of state detention in England and Wales.

My Fellowship aims to explore models and learning related to postvention support following suicides in prisons. While the increasing occurrence of suicides in custody in 'clusters' is well understood, the potential of postvention interventions to support those impacted and prevent contagion is not yet fully realised. My ambition is to examine international custody postvention initiatives as they exist both formally and informally to inform the development of national policy and practice to prevent future deaths.