Mercy Lilian Gichuki

Mercy Lillian is a CRE Scholar and PhD student in the Global Health Program at Institute for Applied Health Sciences McMaster University Canada. Her proposed PHD research focuses on racialized and newcomer women's health, particularly with Intimate Partner Violence. Her study considers the extent to which an Afrocentric lens has been applied in research that examines Intimate Partner Violence experiences among Black, African, and Caribbean women in Canada. Mercy also works as a Program Manager in the Violence Against Women (VAW) sector. Her experience is in both VAW and the public health sector, working with women living with HIV, survivors of gender-based and sexual violence, newcomers, refugees, and women with precarious status. Mercy works from an anti-oppressive, trauma aware integrated feminist lens with a deep understanding of the many intersections that women face.

Mercy is excited for an opportunity to work with the CRE through their partnership with McMaster University Canada. For her this opportunity offers a learning experience from great researchers and scholars with a different worldview from her. She is hoping that the CRE's research dissemination on understanding Intergenerational trauma will lead to informing works that are being done with Indigenous communities in other global settings in turn starting the healing journey for different generations and hopefully ending the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Mercy embodies an intersectional health framework in both her community work and proposed research areas. Her pedagogy, which includes the significance factors of race, gender, and violence and its connection with chronic health, is based on over 20 years of experience working in public health, locally and globally.

Mercy acknowledges the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Mississauga's of the Credit First Nations, Anishinaabe Nation, Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy on which she is learning, working and organizing everyday. As an immigrant to this land, she commits herself to raising awareness on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) standing in solidarity and call for justice and decolonizing practices.

Raising and keeping up with her son, family and friends as well as getting lost in photography or a good novel keep Mercy strong and resilient.