Written by Franciska Neuhäuser

Read me
like a country you cannot pronounce
but whose soil grows under your tongue anyway. 

There is a moment when health stops being abstract.
For me, it was the moment I realised that I no longer belonged.

The title of my thesis – Who’s Health Matters? – is intentional.

My Master’s research is an autoethnographic exploration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates. It weaves together personal narrative, critical reflection, and creative expression to examine how health, autonomy, and belonging were experienced and negotiated during the pandemic. From a critical health psychology perspective, health is not simply biological, but socially constructed – shaped by discourse, power, and systems of meaning (Chamberlain et al., 2018; Lyons & Chamberlain, 2017).

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