🌟 About Emma Astra
Not just a niche — where lived experience, research & creativity come together through voluntary projects for real social change.
Researcher, charity-builder & volunteer creative. Jack of all trades, PhD of one. Making creativity, research & stories accessible — bridging AI, technology & human connection. Bringing community into people’s homes.
🎥 Watch the video that describes About Emma Astra:
🌱 Mission
To make creativity, research and stories accessible for everyone — especially disabled and working-class people who are so often locked out of traditional opportunities.
My work is always voluntary, because I believe community thrives when it is shared, not sold. I also support grassroots organisations and charities to define their own vision and mission, helping projects grow strong roots and sustainable branches. I’ve offered this voluntary consultancy to a range of groups — from grassroots collectives to organisations like Lapidus (writing for wellbeing) — to help them connect their purpose with the communities they serve.
This work is also building towards the Emma Astra Foundation, a future registered charity rooted in voluntary action and grassroots growth.
🌳 Vision
I think of my approach as a tree.
The grassroots are lived experiences and voluntary projects.
The branches are storytelling, research, and creative innovation.
The canopy is Astra: a future where accessible publishing, inclusive research, and new opportunities flourish.
Ultimately, my vision is to establish a charity rooted in philanthropy and 100% voluntary action, sustaining creative, inclusive, and community-driven projects for the long term.
✨ The Why
I spent nearly two decades in social work, reaching the top of my career, and realised something crucial: policy doesn’t create real change. It often looks good on paper but fails the people it claims to serve.
And neither do charities that focus more on sustaining themselves than on making real change in people’s lives. That’s not my approach. I believe in action — because actions speak louder with words.
So I began thinking differently. To move people, you must move their emotions. To create change, ideas must be usable and accessible in everyday life.
I’m from Leicester: the “city of the underdog.” (We all remember Leicester City’s miracle football win in 2016 — though my underdog passion is for real lives, not football.) For me, it’s about positive social development, championing those too often overlooked. Working-class people deserve recognition at last.
🤖 My Stance on AI
Many writers fear AI. I don’t.
For me, AI is an opportunity: a tool that can open doors for disabled and working-class people who already have the ideas, drive and graft, but face systemic barriers. Too often, critics of AI have never used it; their fear is about jobs, not possibility.
I use AI, technology, and social media not to replace creativity, but to support accessibility and amplify human stories. I also help sceptical people engage with these tools with confidence and knowledge, instead of fear.
For me, AI isn’t about replacement — it’s about opportunity.
📚 Research & Education
My research is practice-based and focused on real-world issues:
Chronic illness & disability (Diary of a Disabled PhD Student).
Lived experience research through digital media and journalism.
Social justice–based research on issues that matter today, from voluntary work to inequality.
Creative methods of expression — using comedy, TV script writing, and performance to move people emotionally and evoke positive social change.
Ultimately, I am a lived-experience expert, working to make research accessible and relatable — both for people who want to become researchers, and for readers who want to engage with knowledge in everyday life.
🌍 Projects
Disabled People & Actors Project 🎭 – Shifting representation of disabled performers.
Leicester Biographies ✍️ – Short biographies and extended video podcasts, bringing real stories into the spotlight.
Publishing 📖 –
Disabled Peoples Publishing: Supporting working-class disabled authors and making books more accessible.
Pen Pals Publishing: A grassroots collective in Leicester, encouraging collaboration and creativity.
Research & Education 🎓 – Making research accessible and relatable, both for people wanting to become researchers and for readers who want to engage with knowledge in everyday life.
Fiction & Creative Writing 📚 – Experiments, series, and storytelling.
📝 Articles & Series
Daily Rants 💬 – Honest, unfiltered reflections.
Ask Astra 💫 – Advice, encouragement, and community Q&A.
Music Memories 🎶 – A reflective series on the memories that music sparks.
📖 From Disabled PhD Student to Emma Astra
Before Emma Astra, I wrote under the Substack handle @disabledphdstudent. That space was my experimental hub: the Creative Writing Hub, Diary of a Disabled PhD Student, the Disabled People and Actors Project, and early explorations of how Substack could stretch as a platform.
Alongside this, I was also experimenting across platforms — with around 5,000 followers on Medium and 3,000 followers on TikTok. These experiments in writing, media, and creating gave me space to test ideas, formats, and ways of reaching people. I often call this process my “draft” — because unlike the word “craft,” which feels pompous and gatekeeping, draft is about openness, accessibility, and creating things that anyone can engage with.
But I realised that when you spread yourself too thin, your content gets scattered and diluted. So I’ve decided to bring everything together under one roof — here.
I often create from my bedroom — as someone with chronic illness, this is my base. Think 1990s Paula Yates on the bed with The Big Breakfast — informal, real, unfiltered. You might even catch a glimpse of my array of pyjamas along the way.
Substack gives me the space to do that: no middleman, no algorithms, no scattered accounts.
✨ Just me. Just Astra.
💡 Engagement & Impact
Everything I do is voluntary and free — because access shouldn’t come with a paywall.
Impact for me means:
Recognition for working-class and disabled people’s contributions.
Accessibility in creativity, research, and publishing.
Voluntary consultancy — helping organisations, grassroots groups, and wellbeing projects like Lapidus shape their vision, mission, and community impact.
Inclusive storytelling across formats — for example, creating short biographies for the Disabled People & Actors Project and sharing them on multiple social media platforms. Originally designed to meet different disability communication needs, these also proved successful across various learning styles (video, written, audio). This approach raised awareness of the huge contributions disabled people make — and of disability itself. I am now replicating this model through Leicester Biographies, widening its reach and impact.
Inspiration for underrepresented people to reach higher education.
Action, not just words — projects that move emotions and create real change in everyday life.
👉 If you’d like to have a biography done for the Disabled People & Actors Project or Leicester Biographies — or if you’d like to get involved in publishing or research projects — please get in touch.
This is what Astra means: a future grown from grassroots, branching into opportunity, and rooted in community.
📌 Start exploring:
👉 Want to see more of my digital media projects?
Visit: www.linktr.ee/emmaastra