Wellcome Trust Discovery Award:

Work related suicide and social justice

1. Project overview

Work-related suicide, an international social justice analysis is a research project funded by the Wellcome Trust from February 2025 to January 2029. Its purpose is to examine the complex causes and contexts of work-related suicide across the UK, France and Canada:  https://wellcomesuicideproject.leeds.ac.uk/profiles/.

Bringing together suicide researchers and legal scholars, the project aims to:

• identify, analyse and compare causal factors behind work-related suicide across different occupations, sectors and national contexts;
• address urgent issues of recognition, justice and accountability for suicidal individuals and their families;
• develop, through rigorous comparative analysis, evidence-based and actionable recommendations to transform suicide prevention strategies nationally and internationally.

The research team consists of lead researcher: Prof Sarah Waters, University of Leeds; and co-researchers: Dr. China Mills, Healing Justice London; Dr. Loïc Lerouge, University of Bordeaux/CNRS, Prof Steve Bittle, University of Ottawa, together with our project coordinator Helen Oberreuter and three researcher assistants: Dr Emily Yue (London), Dr Nicolas Chaignot (Bordeaux) and Dr Lacey Croft (Ottawa).