Rachel is based at UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit. She is a sociologist and ethnographer with research interests in social inequalities, support networks, and family and friendship practices. Within the ActEarly Healthy Livelihoods theme, she is working on the NIHR-funded Fair Food Futures UK project, focusing on access to community food assets in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. This ethnographic study explores which models of food aid are most effective in reducing food insecurity, and aims to influence policy and practice at local and national levels. Rachel has a background in community development, working with families across several London boroughs. For her PhD, she carried out ethnographic research in a London neighbourhood to explore the impact of ‘Hostile Environment’ policies, insecure immigration status, ‘no recourse to public funds’ and financial precarity on mothers, in particular looking at how these affect their interpersonal relationships and access to financial, material and emotional support. Rachel has spent the last year as an ESRC postdoctoral fellow sharing findings from her research with mothers, practitioners, advocates and policymakers, for example through knowledge-sharing workshops, conferences, journal articles and a short video. Rachel has also undertaken qualitative research on the impact of COVID-19 on early childhood education and care settings and growing up in coastal towns.