Suicide and Evidence, Seminar Series

Suicide research and prevention is generally driven by statistics, which in the UK and much of the West have historically reported (white cis) men as dying at the highest rates of suicide. In this seminar series, we rethink what constitutes as ‘evidence’ about suicide. We learn from folks researching suicide with populations who are often under-represented in or excluded from suicide statistics. In these cases, we are interested in how evidence on suicide is navigated and reimagined, and what this offers for suicide knowledge production. We also hear in this seminar series from people who are critiquing the statistical status quo of existing (often pathological, white male) evidence on suicide.

Evidence of welfare state violence: navigating tensions towards radical action

In the first seminar of the series, we are joined by china mills. The Deaths by Welfare project evidences the way the UK welfare system kills people, and how disabled people and bereaved families resist. The project navigates many tensions around evidence – which I’ll share in this session. These include questions around: what counts as evidence and who decides? What are we using evidence to do? Often we imagine that evidence of harm is a way to fight for government accountability. But what about when policies are harmful by design? And how do you evidence harm by design? We’ll explore tactics of evidence-making to explore the kind of impact we’re imagining – from tinkering at the edges of policy in ways that may ultimately reinforce the power and violence of the system, to asking what role evidence can play in shaping radical action, bearing witness, validating people’s experiences, and resourcing ourselves to move toward a collective strategy.

22^nd October 2025 3pm Evidence of welfare state violence: navigating tensions towards radical action

Ethnicity and suicide in England and Wales

In this seminar, Duleeka Knipe discusses her team’s work at the University of Bristol on the UK’s first ever suicide statistics to be disaggregated by ethnicity:

Using the Office for National Statistics 2012–19 mortality data linked to the 2011 census from the Public Health Research Database, Knipe et al. (2024) calculated the age-standardised suicide rates by sex for each of the 18 self-identified ethnicity groups in England and Wales. While almost all minority ethnic groups had a lower rate of suicide than the White British majority, individuals who identified as being from a Mixed heritage background or White Gypsy or Irish Travellers, were reported to die at similar or higher rates, in both male and females. Their findings have significant potential for intersectional approaches to UK suicide research, which typically over-represents white men in suicide prevention.

5^th November 2025 3pm https://events.bookitbee.com/university-of-edinburgh-26/ethnicity-and-suicide-in-england-and-wales/