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As a Nigerian woman who was born in New York and raised in London, Catherine Labiran is passionate about advancing human rights and social justice through poetry, advocacy and research.

Catherine strives to infuse her diverse cultural experiences into exhilarating bodies of work enabling them to live lives of their own. She was selected as a winner of SLAMbassadors UK 2010, a winner of 30 Nigeria House, and was conferred the honour of writing the official Olympic Poem for London 2012 as one of London’s “12 Poets for 2012”. In the past, she has been the poet in residence for Bang Said The Gun and Larmer Tree Festival. Her poetry has been translated into several languages for publications across the globe. She was the buddy poet for Wole Soyinka and TJ Dema during Poetry Parnassus and thousands of her poems were dropped by helicopter over Jubilee Gardens during this same event. Catherine is featured in the National Association for the Teaching of English’s ‘SLAM’ DVD that was sent to every high school in the United Kingdom. Her poems have not only been studied at high school level, but also at university level.  She has performed in venues such as The House of Commons, The Royal Festival Hall, The Queen Elizabeth Hall, to name but a few. She has managed to perform across Europe, Africa and America. Catherine’s first book entitled ‘Ayisat’ was launched in Cape Town, South Africa in Novemeber 2013. ‘Ayisat’, which is stocked and sold internationally, can be read in Southbank Poetry Library.

Catherine has worked for a number of human rights organizations including the US Human Rights Network where she helped cultivate grassroots organizing power by supporting USHRN’s members and linking their work to events and activities happening  at the United Nations. At USHRN, Catherine’s area of focus was the UN’s international Decade for People of African Descent where she coordinated a Working Group of individuals who were striving to help actualize the Decade’s goal of achieving recognition, justice and development for people of African descent by 2024. In 2019, Catherine was selected as a Fellow for People of African Descent by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. In 2020, she was named as one of the Most Influential People of African Descent by MIPAD 100.

As the Gender Justice Program Coordinator at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Catherine led BAJI’s gender-related research and advocacy initiatives. Catherine also served in the Healthy Equity & Access under the Law (HEAL) Act Coalition, which works to expand access to healthcare for immigrant women and families. Additionally, Catherine represented BAJI on the advisory committee for National Bail Out and engages in national efforts to end the HIV epidemic in Black communities. She was also invited to speak for a number of institutions including Columbia University, Yale University and Malmo University in Sweden.

After working at BAJI, Catherine served as a Program Manager for Research and Training at The Praxis Project. At Praxis, Catherine supported Praxis’ growing portfolio of technical assistance, training, research, and evaluation engagements.

She is passionate about community-based participatory research and enjoys advising groups on their projects. Through her work with Social Insights Research, she has supported evaluation projects with Black Feminist Future, the Liberatory Leadership project/Center for Third World Organizing, Community Change’s Women’s Fellowship, and me too. International.

Outside of writing and working, Catherine prioritizes volunteering for local organizations. Catherine has held volunteer placements with the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the International Human Trafficking Institute and the Partnership Against Domestic Violence to name but a few.

Catherine holds a BA in Psychology from Emory University, an MA in African Studies from Yale University, a certification in Data Science: R Basics from HarvardX (an online learning initiative of Harvard University), a certification in Somatic Attachment Therapy from the Embody Lab and has completed module one in Somatic Sex Education from the Institute of Somatic Sex Education . In 2022, The Boris Henson Foundation selected Catherine as a finalist for their Joy Award for Black mental health professionals.