Our friend Diamond Devi Kali, a second-year English student with us at Oxford, has been experiencing severe mobility and respiratory issues. Extreme weakness, immobility in her limbs, and an inability to stand or walk for over a month has now restricted her to an electric wheelchair. She also has difficulty with breathing, swallowing and chewing, meaning her diet is limited to softer foods.

Though Diamond was experiencing chronic weakness and fatigue throughout her time at Oxford, the neurological condition which advanced this year meant she began falling regularly and would frequently need several days in bed. Her mobility began to decline, forcing her to use a walking stick, and eventually a wheelchair. It is this alarming progression of events, in conjunction with various other factors, which has led to a multifaceted emergency.

Diamond is a trans woman of colour, as well as an international student from the US. She started living independently from her family in December 2025 due to their rejection of her identity as a trans woman. She expected, still, that her parents would continue to fund her tuition and living costs at Oxford after their separation. This arrangement would have depended on her financial and legal bond to her biological family.

Due to the severity of her untreated neurological disability and the rapidity of its decline, Diamond has needed to access urgent medical care in the US. Her legal status as a dependent, however, made it impossible to receive care without recourse to her parents' insurance plan. In practice, this was unavailable to her given the state of their separation. But in the time since leaving Oxford, her declining health put pressure on this arrangement of formal dependence and informal estrangement. The interplay of food and housing insecurity, as well as the medical neglect she experienced at Oxford led her to pursue formal emancipation from her parents to ensure her eligibility for state-funded health insurance, food and transportation assistance, and housing. This now means that she is entirely independent from her parents and can no longer rely on their support of her tuition and living expenses. Diamond’s future at Oxford is now incredibly uncertain: she is unable to finish her final term of second year, and likely also the final year of her degree.

After unexpectedly losing housing in Oakland, California, Diamond is currently homeless. She is temporarily staying in a hotel in San Francisco through government assistance, but will have to move to a homeless shelter once her voucher expires. Her disability and poor health hinders her chances of employment in the near future and she is well below the poverty line, with just over 400 USD in her savings after booking an emergency flight back to the US to access urgent medical care. In addition to accessing emergency shelter through state welfare assistance, she has needed to pay for food, transportation, and hygiene costs out of pocket—all of which have strained her personal finances. She is surviving on food stamps, with 10 USD per day allocated towards produce and cold food, though she has no access to a kitchen and cannot cook in her current condition. She has not eaten a hot, cooked meal since leaving Oxford and can only afford to eat once a day.

Any donations received will support Diamond’s survival expenses. 50% of this will go towards housing and saving for rent, 25% towards sustenance and 25% for transportation and medical costs. Since she is also living in community with other Black and Brown trans women, some of these resources will be redistributed.

We first met Diamond at the beginning of our Freshers’ Week in October 2024. Her sharp intellect, witty humour and deep sense of empathy immediately made her one of our favourite people to bond over late night conversations with. The sense of kindness and care with which she approaches the world has always shone through in our interactions with her in both academic and social settings.

Back home in Oakland, Diamond is a community organiser and poet. She has received a substantial grant from the Transgender Law Centre and Emergent Fund in support of her work, in addition to training and funding from TGIJP - Miss Major Black Trans Cultural Center and Forward Together. She is creating a programme for Black and Brown trans youth within the Bay Area—intellectual and political labour that she will continue doing in her current situation. Diamond serves as a Community Educator and Programme Director at the Queer Arts Center in Oakland, developing creative and political education classes for youth.

At Oxford, Diamond founded the Trans Studies Working Group alongside TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) and the MSt in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She organized the first panel on Black trans studies and trans of colour critique, bringing these together with Black trans feminist voices in regular seminars on intersectional studies. All of her pioneering work will now cease to exist following her precarious position at Oxford. Diamond is also an academically high-achieving student, frequently receiving praise from tutors and on track to perform highly in her final exams.

Diamond’s rapidly deteriorating condition, as well the structural neglect she faced at Oxford, came at a huge shock to both of us. As a low-income, severely disabled, estranged international student and trans woman of colour, she is disadvantaged in complex ways which we cannot imagine. We would greatly appreciate any support with her urgent survival costs, so she is able to honour her intellectual and creative vocation and pursue her dreams.

Iona Mandal and Pearl Patten

St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford