Sir Patrick Vernon to lead Rio talk as film spotlights black and working-class health researchers

A Hackney cinema will play host to the opening night screening of a new documentary film that aims to highlight the work of black and working-class people in academic research.

Professor Karen Wells, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, has created the documentary, called Turning Points: Black and Working Class Journeys into Health Research.

The film explores how three professors and a PhD student chose a career in health research, the difficulties they have faced and what contributions they have made to produce new knowledge in the health sciences. It will be screened for free at the Rio Cinema in Dalston on Thursday (9 July) and has a run time of 44 minutes.

“The idea of the film was to think about what differences people bring to their research when they have lived experience of inequality,” Wells explained.

The film was funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust to Birkbeck, University of London, where Wells is also a professor of international development and childhood studies, alongside her work with their Institute for Social Research. The aim of the grant was to help create a more diverse academic research culture.

“I was the academic lead on a grant application to Wellcome for a large research cultures grant to implement various strategies to diversify their academic workforce,” explained Wells.

She continued: “One of the activities within that was to make a film featuring black academics of any class and working-class people of any ethnicity, because black people are very underrepresented in academic spaces, as are working-class people.”

Finding four lives

To find their protagonists for the film, Wells and her colleague Dr Haroon Forde interviewed a range of academics and then narrowed it down to four people that they wanted to focus on: three professors: Amaka Offiah, Helen Minnis, and Sharon Cox, and PhD student, Tomi Akingbade

The pair then spent a day with each of them, filming them in their workplaces and also in two of their homes.

“[We wanted to] give people a sense of what academic life is like and what you do when you are an academic,” she said. “What does it mean to do academic research and how and why did these four women decide to go into and stay in that kind of field.”

The trailer shows snippets of interviews with these four people, discussing how they began their careers, what their relationship is with their PhD students and what motivates them in their work.

Taking it on the road

The film is having a number of screenings in different areas of London, following its opening night at the Rio Cinema in Dalston. Other screenings will be held in Tottenham, Peckham and Brixton.

“These are all historically black, working-class neighbourhoods,” Wells explained of the location choices.

The Rio Cinema is Hackney’s leading independent cinema, screening films at that location since 1909.

It was established as a community-led charity in 1976 and remains a thriving part of London’s film culture today.

A conversation after the credits

Following the screening, there will be a panel discussion led by Professor Sir Patrick Vernon, a social commentator and political activist. Vernon was recently knighted in the 2026 Birthday Honours for his services to racial equality.

He also served for eight years as a Labour councillor for Queensbridge ward in Hackney, prior to the ward being abolished.

Sir Patrick will be joined by two of the professors who are featured in the film, along with Prof Karen Wells, Dr Chetna Modi and Dr Haroon Forde, who will discuss NHS training pathways,

Wells said she hopes that black people and people from a working-class background who watch the film and listen to the panel discussion will consider entering the field of academic health research.

“I think the takeaways from the film might be that it’s important that knowledge production gets done by diverse groups of people,” she said. “[Hopefully viewers will] enjoy seeing these four people flourishing in their careers and lives and enjoy the film.”

You can book free tickets for the Rio Cinema screening of Turning Points: Black and Working Class Journeys into Health Research here.