Stephani joined King’s College London in December 2006 and leads the Health Inequalities & Inequities Research Group, working across sectors, locally and nationally, to deliver interdisciplinary research on inequities in mental health and across health and social care services with an emphasis on race at the intersection of other social identities. She has expertise in sociology and psychiatric epidemiology, using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to study the impact of discrimination, social adversity, social determinants over the life course on mental health and multimorbidity. Her work integrates collaborative and inclusive approaches to knowledge production, dissemination and action across capacity building, education and training, impact strategies and research. She holds local and national policy advisory roles across the health and social care sector and voluntary and community sector. Much of Stephani’s work at King’s focuses on initiatives promoting and embedding more equitable policies, research culture, and equality, diversity and inclusion practices.

Stephani was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2025. More about Stephani Hatch can be found in her profile piece published in The Lancet, titled 'Stephani Hatch: Rethinking Power in Health-Care Research.'

Stephani is Principal Investigator (PI) on the Wellcome Discovery Award funded, Collective Action for Race Equity in Health and Social Care (CARE-HSC) programme, launched in 2025. Led by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, in collaboration with Black Thrive Global and international partners in the United States and Sweden, the programme aims to address structural inequalities by examining the systems, policies, and practices in health and social care that perpetuate racial inequities. This work builds on the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (TIDES) study, funded by Wellcome (2017-2022) and used innovative quantitative and qualitative methods, including linked survey and health record data, as well as virtual reality methods to examine how biases and discrimination impact clinical interactions and treatment recommendations. The study was expanded in 2020 with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to utilise a participatory framework to identify mechanisms through which racial and ethnic inequalities in mental health and occupational outcomes are produced, maintained and resisted.

Stephani also currently co-leads the Marginalised Communities programme within the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, focused on working in close partnership with communities that have often been ignored, to examine and disrupt structures maintaining social inequities in mental health. She is PI for the CONNECT study (CONtributions of social NEtworks to Community Thriving) which uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) to investigate social capital and networks as resources that benefit (or hinder) marginalised communities and their mental health. It focuses primarily on Black and other minoritised groups’ experiences at the intersection of gender, migration, and other social identities.

Additionally, Stephani co-leads the Narrowing Inequalities Platform within the UKRI Population Health Improvement (PHI-UK), Population Mental Health Consortium, bringing together 10+ partnerships across universities, local government, voluntary organisations and people with lived experience, to understand what can be done to prevent the onset of mental health problems, using insights from large-scale linked data. The consortium focuses on three challenge areas: children and young people, suicide and self-harm prevention, and multiple long-term conditions.

Stephani also co-founded the Health & Social Equity Collective in 2021 with funding from a King’s Together Infrastructure Award and Impact on Urban Health (part of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Foundation). The co-developed Health and Social Equity Collective is comprised of local, national and international partners consisting of researchers, experts by experience, community leaders, policy makers, artists and health professionals responding to persistent social and health inequities. The HSE Collective is leading the Community Organised Research for Equity (CORE) project, funded by Impact on Urban Health, which supported community-driven population health initiatives. These projects addressed key priorities identified by communities within the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

These current projects build on Stephani’s work as co-PI of the South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study, one of the largest, most comprehensive UK studies of urban mental health and service use that provides much-needed data on ethnic minority and migrant populations, set in the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth from 2008 to 2015.