Ella Asheri (she/her) is Woodbrooke’s Programme Coordinator for Racial & Social Justice. She is a facilitator, educator and researcher with a particular focus on psychosocial and psychospiritual approaches to social change. Her background is within universities as a scholar-activist, Students’ Union Education Officer, and professional services staff. Ella has also worked within grassroots youth justice charities, and has experience campaigning and organising around anti-racist education, radical pedagogy, disability justice, and anti-marketisation at universities.

In her work, Ella uses embodied and experiential approaches, heart-centred pedagogy, and nature connection, and has recently completed a facilitation training in Joanna Macy’s ‘Work that Reconnects’. Through a healing justice lens, she is currently learning about politicised somatics, and exploring the role of collective and individual trauma healing as a core facet of social change. Although new to Quakerism, Ella is inspired by Quaker spirituality and ways of working.

Following her Undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy, Ella sought to challenge the colonial legacies of the university through co-founding a pilot programme which co-produces the curriculum from decolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives. She then undertook a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies, researching the lived experiences of students within university activist spaces, their felt sense of belonging, and how these spaces might gesture towards liberatory futures.

Ella is currently based between London and Devon, and is committed to building earth-based spiritual and political community that practices radical forms of mutual care.