Key details
Dr Sally Bashford-Squires
Senior Lecturer
Dr Sally Bashford-Squires is Programme Lead for the BSc Public Health programme within the School of Human Sciences at the University of Greenwich. Prior to joining Greenwich, she was a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at Nottingham Trent University. Before entering higher education, Sally spent over 25 years working in primary and secondary education, including as an Assistant Headteacher.
Sally completed her PhD in Public Health at Nottingham Trent University in 2025. Her doctoral research explored how community-led social enterprise initiatives influenced women's health and wellbeing in Uganda's Teso sub-region through a decolonial, ethnographic approach. She also holds an MA in Public Health with Distinction from Nottingham Trent University.
Alongside her academic work, Sally is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. In 2025 she wrote, directed and co-produced Eitai, a participatory documentary exploring women's lives, health and wellbeing in Uganda. The film received an Excellent Award at the Documentaries Without Borders International Film Festival, won Best Independent Documentary at the Reale Film Festival, and received a Special Mention at the United Nations-affiliated Big Syn International Film Festival in London. Eitai has been screened at universities, cinemas and community venues in the UK and Uganda, and was recognised by Springer Nature as one of its 100 most influential public health films, demonstrating the potential of documentary filmmaking as a powerful tool for research dissemination, public engagement and social change.
Sally is also the founder and Chair of a UK-registered charity that works in partnership with women's enterprise groups and local communities in Uganda to support sustainable health, education and livelihood initiatives. This long-standing collaboration continues to inform her research, teaching and knowledge exchange activities.
Her research interests include decolonising global public health, participatory and arts-based research methods, ethnography, documentary filmmaking, Indigenous knowledge, intersectionality, place-based health, gender and wellbeing. She is particularly interested in how creative and participatory methodologies can generate new understandings of health inequalities and amplify the voices of communities whose perspectives are often underrepresented in research and policy.
Sally teaches across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate public health modules, including the social determinants of health, concepts of health and wellbeing, health policy, ethics, and research methods. She is passionate about creating engaging, inclusive learning environments that inspire students to think critically about contemporary public health challenges and to become socially conscious practitioners.
Posts held previously:
- 2021 - 2024 Senior Lecturer MA Public Health Nottingham Trent University
- 2020 - 2021 Research Assistant - Nottingham Trent University. Researching co-created solutions to mitigate gender-based violence in Nottinghamshire
- 2009 - 2020 Assistant Head Teacher - James Peacock Infant School, Nottingham
- 2005 - 2007 Senior Promotions Controller within the Academic Range - Oxford University Press
- 1997 - 2001 English, Drama, and Sociology teacher - The Heathland School, Hounslow
Responsibilities within the university
- Teaching on the BSc Public Health modules
- Supervising MSc dissertation students
Awards
Awarded the ILD Future R&KE Leaders Dissemination Award University of Greenwich 2025
Awarded the following for directing, writing, and production the documentary Eitai:
- Nominated Silver Screen Award - July 2026
- Nominated Green Frog Award - May 2026
- Semi Finalist Spotlight on Academics Film Festival March 2026
- Honourable Mention Big Syn United Nations Film Festival, London October - 2025
- Finalist International Sociology Association Film Festival, Rabat, August 2025
Finalist Berlin Women’s Film Festival February 2025
Finalist Equality Feature Jackson Doc Fest January 2025
Official Selection Lift-Off Global Network September 2025
Excellent Award Documentaries Without Borders International Film Festival March 2026
Winner Reale Film Festival, Italy November 2026
Recommended by Springer Nature (2026) as one of the 100 inspiring, must-watch movies focused on global health
Winner of public and academic award at Images of Research 2023 for photograph and abstract titled ‘A Gift of a Sheep - Nottingham Trent University.
Recognition
- Reviewer for European Journal of Education
- Reviewer for Disasters Journal
- External Examiner for London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - MSc Public Heatlh
- Urban and Rural Health and Wellbeing: Contemporary Global Issues - Routledge Books - Taylor & Francis Group
Research / Scholarly interests
Sally's research explores how community-led social enterprise initiatives, Indigenous knowledge systems and participatory approaches can improve health and wellbeing within marginalised communities in sub-Saharan Africa. She is particularly interested in how local knowledge, livelihoods and collective action contribute to climate resilience, sustainable development and more equitable public health outcomes. Her research has also examined how women's economic empowerment can reduce vulnerability to gender-based violence and strengthen individual and community wellbeing.
Her broader research interests include decolonising global public health, ethnography, participatory documentary and arts-based research methods, intersectionality, new materialism, place-based health, and Indigenous knowledge. She is passionate about collaborative approaches to research that foreground community voices and challenge dominant ways of producing knowledge.
Since 2016, Sally has worked in partnership with communities and organisations across East Africa through both her research and her UK-registered charity. She is committed to developing ethical, reciprocal and culturally responsive research partnerships that support meaningful and sustainable social change.
Key funded projects
| Organisation Name | Description | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Institute for Lifecourse Development (ILD) | funding to attend the screening of Eitai at the ISA film festival in Rabat | £3000 |
| ILD and NTU | funding to screen Eitai across Uganda | £5000 |
| ILD | funding to screen Eitai at the University of Greenwich | £1000 |
| ILD | funding to share PhD results at GlobeHeal in Indonesia | £2000 |
| Nottingham Trent University | Connecting Globally grant from Nottingham Trent University to research how the digital determinants of health impact community health workers and social entrepreneurs (2024) | |
| Nottingham Trent University | Nottingham Trent University grant to produce a documentary to disseminate the results of my PhD (2024) |
Recent publications
Journals:
Bashford-Squires, S., Clark, A., Markowski, M., (2026) Guest Editors Reimagining Film in Research: Methodologies, Ethics, and the Politics of Representation. Sage International Journal of Qualitive Methods Special Edition
Frost, D., and Bashford-Squires, S. (2022). Value co-creation in the delivery of public services: Formulating a strategy for low- and middle income countries. In EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2022 (p. 215)
Book Chapters:
Bashford-Squires, S. (in press). The impact of social enterprise projects on youth empowerment, health, and wellbeing: A case study from Teso sub-region, Uganda. In Rousseau et al. (Eds.), Youth Employment and Employability in the Global South. Palgrave
Breau, G., Okumbaga, M., and Bashford-Squires, S. (2025). Fostering career development in undergraduate public health students. In S. Beckingham and W. Garnham (Eds.), Creative Approaches to Academic Advising and Personal Tutoring. Routledge
Bashford-Squires, S., Gibson, L., and Nyashanu, M. (2022). Mitigating gender-based violence through the economic empowerment of women: A case study of the Teso sub-region in Uganda. In Indigenous Methodologies, Research and Practices for Sustainable Development (pp. 371 391). Cham: Springer International Publishing
Article:
Mullany, L., Trickett, L., and Bashford-Squires, S. (2023). Tackling online misogyny: What needs to be done in schools – and our communities. The Conversation [Online]
Bashford-Squires, S. (2019). To nudge or to shove? The UK government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in relation to the social determinants of health. Everyday Society (British Sociological Association) [Online]
Bashford-Squires, S., 2025 Eitai https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35653596/
- Mullany, L., Trickett, L., Bashford-Squires, S.,2023 Tackling online misogyny: what needs to be done in schools – and our communities. The Conversation [Online]
- Bashford-Squires, S., Gibson, L. and Nyashanu, M., 2022. Mitigating gender-based violence through the economic empowerment of women: a case study of the Teso sub-region in Uganda. In Indigenous Methodologies, Research and Practices for Sustainable Development (pp. 371-391). Cham: Springer International Publishing
- Frost, D. and Bashford-Squires, S., 2022. Value co-creation in the delivery of public services: formulating a strategy for low-and middle-income countries. EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2022, p.215
- Bashford-Squires, S. 2020. To Nudge or to Shove? The Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in relation to the social determinants of health. The British Sociological Association, Everyday Society [online]
Presentations
- Oral Presentation: The Impact of Social Enterprise Projects on Women’s Health in Teso, Uganda – GlobeHeal, Indonesia, February 2026
- Film Festival Screening : Eitai, Short Listed for the International Sociological Association Forum Film Festival, Rabat, Morocco, July 2025
- Oral presentation: The Impact of Women’s Economic Projects on Gender-Based Violence in Teso Sub-Region, Uganda. The British Sociological Association, online. September 2022
- Oral presentation: The Importance of Reflexivity when working with an Indigenous Population The International Union for Health Promotion, Montreal, Canada (Online), February 2022
- Oral presentation: The use of Autoethnography when working with an Indigenous Population. The University of Manchester Public Health Conference, October 2023
- Oral presentation: The Impact of Social Enterprise Projects on Women’s Health in the Teso Sub-Region, Uganda. The World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne, Australia, April 2023 Invited Chair: Covid-19 Pandemic and Health Workforce Policies and Governance, The World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne, Australia, 2023
- Oral presentation: The Importance of Partnership when working in Low Resource Settings. International Lymphoedema Framework, Nottingham, May 2023
- Oral presentation: An Exploration of How Women’s Social Enterprise Projects can Mitigate Issues of Climate Change in Teso Sub-Region, Uganda. Makerere University Environmental Health Conference, Kampala, Uganda, June 2023
- Oral presentation: The Impact of Enterprise Projects on Community Health in Teso Sub-Region. The People’s Health Movement, Kampala, Uganda, February 2024