I am an Associate Professor in Anthropology and Public Health in the Department of Global Health and Development. I have 15 years of experience researching the interactions between service providers, patients and their carers in health systems (primarily) in East and Southern Africa. I work in formal health systems and have worked extensively in medicine markets in Uganda alongside colleagues from Makerere University.
My expertise lies in the use of traditional anthropological methods and social theory across a range of public health areas (HIV/AIDS, malaria and health systems). This has developed into a critical concern with governance: whose rules matter and dominate in a particular setting, which forms of rule breaking matter (most) and what drives them. Alongside anthropology, I draw on anti-corruption theory and am interested in how public health can learn from developments in theory and practice within international development. My research has been funded by MRC, FCDO, the Wellcome Trust and NIHR.
I am the co-lead of the Anthroplogical Approaches to Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Development.
I am a member of the Health Systems Global Thematic Working Group on Action on Accountability and Anti-corruption for SDGs (TWG AAA), I am also a member of the Global Network for Anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in health. I sit on the Policy and Practice committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I supervise MSc and PhD students. I am the module organiser for Medical Anthropology in Public Health (DL). I deliver the lecture "People Centred Health Systems" on the in house Health Systems Course and the lecture on International Development and Global Health.
I am the Deputy Department Research Degree Coordinator (initial enquiries).
Research
My research focuses on informality in health systems. This includes examining the realities of everyday practice of care providers (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medicine sellers) and how this is shaped by social, political and economic structures in which policy and the protocols (of complex intervention trials) are implemented. Through this work, I have also explored the unintended consequences of policy change and public health interventions.
I have two main arenas in which I work. The first is in the medicines retail sector, where I have traced how ways of distributing medicines in these highly informal spaces are shaped by socio-economic and political networks, policy changes, public health interventions and social relations. The second is in the formal health system where I have looked at how health workers incorporate change into daily practice and care giving. This has led me to examine how corruption shapes the delivery of care and how effective anti-corruption strategies that take social networks, health system limitations and political systems into acount could be created. My research has been funded by MRC, DFID and Wellcome.
Selected Publications
