Dr Celestin Okoroji · Social scientist

Research leader and methodologist in race, equity, community evidence and mixed-methods evaluation.

I use rigorous, evidence-based methods to address structural disparities and build community power.

2×

Head of Research

RSA (2023–25) and Black Thrive (2021–23), building and leading research functions.

£4.3m

Research funding

Grants and funding from Wellcome, Nuffield, JRF, the National Lottery and others.

Wellcome Accelerator Award

Principal Investigator, Data Democracy for the Health and Wellbeing of Black Communities.

Selected work

The question, the approach, and what changed.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation · 2025 · Just Knowledge

Question: Why does child poverty persist in one of England’s most deprived areas, and what happens when residents lead the interpretation of data about their own lives?
Approach: Five workshops with 17 residents, combining analysis of deprivation, housing, employment and local economic data with collective sense-making.
What changed: Residents set out their own recommendations, including a community-controlled Northumberland Park Endowment Fund. Over 400 people signed up for the findings webinar.

Wellcome Accelerator Award · 2025–27 · Principal Investigator

Question: What do stop and search data, read alongside Black communities’ lived experience, tell us about racial disproportionality and mental health?
Approach: An open-source R package, policedatR, that analyses over a million stop and search records, with community interpretation through stop and search monitoring groups.
So far: Anyone can now produce disproportionality statistics by area and over time. The package is published in Crime Science (2026).

Wellcome Discovery Award · 2025–28 · Co-Investigator

Question: What role do “excited delirium” and its successor, acute behavioural disturbance, play in deaths following police restraint, which fall disproportionately on Black people?
Approach: Spatial analysis and visual forensics with statistics, medico-legal research, history and sociology, with Forensic Architecture, Physicians for Human Rights, Queen Mary University of London, INQUEST and Mind in Haringey.
Where it’s going: New investigations into restraint and policing practice, culminating in a major public exhibition.

Research design, mixed-methods evaluation and methods training for organisations working on race and equity.

This work is currently delivered through Just Knowledge.

Have a research or evaluation question?