Nev Jones, Ph.D.

Nev Jones is a service user/survivor researcher, activist-scholar and Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. Inspired by personal experiences of intensive service involvement (for psychosis) and associated social and structural discrimination, Nev has focused her work on challenging status quo responses to individuals experiencing distress, altered states, and non-consensual realities through a combination of community organizing and mutual aid, critical pedagogy, mentoring, and change-oriented research. She leads the informal coalition Transform Mental Health Research, centered on building capacity, and supporting networking and collective advocacy, among service user/survivors invested in democratizing research. Earlier in her career, she co-founded Chicago Hearing Voices and the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network, and has collaborated with numerous peer-run and cross-disability organizations on advocacy and research projects. Recent areas of focus include documentation of the impact of poverty and structural racism on service users' experiences in and outside the mental health system, and the development of policy aimed at better supporting students with psychiatric disabilities in higher education.