Dr Ana Buller
BA MSc PhD
Associate Professor
in Social Science
LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
I have 18 years’ experience in conducting research and training at the intersection of gender, health and development across low-middle- and high-income settings. My areas of expertise include gender-based violence, sexual exploitation of children and adolescents and intervention development. I am Deputy Director of the Gender, Violence and Health Centre which is a WHO Collaboration Centre (https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/gender-violence-health-centre). My work draws on social theory, social psychology and feminist theories such as gender theory, social norms and power analysis. My experience with research and programme evaluation designs includes cluster RCTs with nested qualitative methods; mixed-methods quasi-experimental evaluations; and feasibility studies.
Current projects:
I currently head the Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation and Abuse (LINEA) project (https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/linea), a global learning initiative on social norms and sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. This initiative which started 6 years ago under the direction of Lori Heise, is currently working with Tanzanian partners in the development and evaluation of a multi-component, gender synchronised intervention using a social norms approach to prevent age-disparate transactional sex through an evidence-based, user-centred, iterative design focusing on girls, men and the community.
I am the principal investigator of the Romantic Jealousy, Infidelity and IPV Collaborative that brings together partners from around the globe to understand the pathways of association linking infidelity and romantic jealousy to IPV. As part of this collaboration we conducted the first global systematic review on the association of romantic jealousy and intimate partner violence against women (Pichon et. al 2020).
I led the first systematic review of the effects of cash and in-kind transfers on IPV in LMIC (Buller et. al. 2018), the results of which shaped the global research agenda and policy in the field of violence against women and girls. This work contributed to the formation of the Cash Transfer and IPV Research Collaborative (https://www.ifpri.org/project/cash-transfer-and-intimate-partner-violence-research-collaborative). Led by IFPRI, this initiative includes LSHTM, UNC, UNICEF—Innocenti, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and aims to advance the research agenda linking cash transfers and IPV, to effectively and safely leverage cash programming for IPV prevention among poor and vulnerable women in LMIC settings.
Affiliations
Teaching
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and teach and tutor on the Public Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health Research MScs. I am a lecturer for various modules within these programmes including Social Epidemiology, Principles of Social Research, Foundations of Reproductive Health and Sexual Health. I coordinate and teach on the GVHC short course Researching Gender-Based Violence: Meaning and Methods and I also teach and coordinate the gender-based violence session for the Profesional Diploma of Tropical Diseases and Health.
I am currently the Exam Board Deputy Chair for the Sexual and Reproductive Health Research MSc and was Course Director for the Public Health MSc for a year.
I have effective doctoral degree supervision experience having supervised 2 students to completion and currently supervising two more students working on issues around gender based violence, sexual and labour trafficking and adolescent health including qualitative and mixed methods methodologies. I enjoy teaching and mentoring research students, securing their timely progression and publications, as well as inducting them into the academic community and supporting their professional development. I have currently availability to take one more student as lead supervisor.
Research
I led the Latin American work package within the Sustainable Development Goals Health and Wellbeing consortium (SDG-HaW) led by Dr. Mitzy Gafos, which included coordinating the work of three multidisciplinary partners conducting a series of qualitative baseline studies to inform the development of tailored intervention packages to support the achievement of the SDG3.1-3.9 targets by 2030 in Chile, Peru and Brazil.
I co-lead with Dr. Cathy Zimmerman Extrehme, a multi-country study in partnership with IoM exploring the links between trafficking, labour exploitation and health.
Regarding my UK work, I was involved in PROVIDE a five year programme of research funded by the NIHR led by Professor Gene Feder and Bristol University and Dr. Loraine Bacchus at LSHTM, aiming to improve the response of the NHS through effective care for people experiencing abuse and perpetrators, with a particular emphasis on the needs of men who have sex with men in London clinics. As part of this project I led the first systematic review on intimate partner among gay and bisexual men and its association with health outcomes (Buller et al 2014).
My PhD research looked into the relationship between the construction of masculinities and interpersonal violence among young men in urban-deprived settings from an ethnographic approach in Lima, Peru.