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Dr Robert Aunger

PhD

Associate Professor
in Evolutionary Public Health

Room
Room 419

LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom

Tel.
0207 927 2097

I have a Master's degree in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California, and a PhD in biological anthropology from UCLA. I worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago Committee on Human Development in culture and mental health and at King's College Cambridge in evolutionary psychology before coming to LSHTM in 2003.

Personal web page

Affiliations

Department of Disease Control
Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases

Teaching

I am module organiser for the Distance Learning unit on the Control of Infectious Diseases, and give lectures and supervise seminars for Health Promotion, Disease Control in Developing Countries, and Tropical and Environmental Health.

Research

My primary project is the development of an innovative, general approach to behaviour change called Behaviour Centred Design, based in evolutionary biology, reinforcement learning theory and ecological psychology. This approach has been used to develop behaviour change programs in hygiene, sanitation, nutrition and HIV. I am particularly interested in habit formation and the routinization of everyday behaviours such as personal hygiene behaviours. I have also developed a sensor-network based method for long-term naturalistic monitoring of behaviour, as well as a variety of qualitative methods for use in formative research. 

Research Area
Child health
Decision analysis
Health promotion
Hygiene
Maternal health
Public health
Sanitation
Water
Behaviour change
Capacity strengthening
Disease control
Environmental Health
Ethnography
Methodology
Mixed methods
Neonatal health
Qualitative methods
Schools
Discipline
Anthropology
Economics
History
Nutrition
Psychology
Sociology
Social Sciences
Disease and Health Conditions
Infectious disease
Country
Cote d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Indonesia
India
Kenya
Nigeria
Senegal
Uganda
United States of America
Vietnam
South Africa
Zambia
Region
East Asia & Pacific (developing only)
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa (developing only)

Selected Publications

Behaviour settings theory applied to domestic water use in Nigeria: A new conceptual tool for the study of routine behaviour.
Curtis V; Dreibelbis R; Buxton H; Izang N; Adekunle D; Aunger R
2019
Social Science and Medicine
The Determinants of Reported Personal and Household Hygiene Behaviour: A Multi-Country Study.
Aunger R; Greenland K; Ploubidis G; Schmidt W; Oxford J; Curtis V
2016
PloS one
Effect of a behaviour-change intervention on handwashing with soap in India (SuperAmma): a cluster-randomised trial.
Biran A; Schmidt W-P; Varadharajan KS; Rajaraman D; Kumar R; Greenland K; Gopalan B; Aunger R; Curtis V
2014
The Lancet Global health
Forming a flossing habit: an exploratory study of the psychological determinants of habit formation.
Judah G; Gardner B; Aunger R
2012
British journal of health psychology
Experimental pretesting of hand-washing interventions in a natural setting.
Judah G; Aunger R; Schmidt W-P; Michie S; Granger S; Curtis V
2009
American journal of public health
See more Publications