Dr Justin Dixon
BA MA PhD
Research Fellow
Medical Anthropology
Justin is a medical anthropologist in the LSHTM Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Centre (http://amr.lshtm.ac.uk) in the Department of Global Health and Development.
Justin's research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of medicine and science, and he is currently working on the social science component of the FIEBRE study in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia (https://amr.lshtm.ac.uk/2017/04/19/febrile-illness-etiologies-broad-range-endemicities-fiebre/). FIEBRE social science uses ethnographic research in clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, markets, drug stores and residential areas to examine the social role(s) of antimicrobial medicines in the treatment of fever or 'hot body'. It also asks what care means in the increasingly restrictive prescribing environment being brought about by AMR-related policy and practice.
Justin previously studied at the University of Cape Town and Durham University of Cape Town. His PhD research involved an ethnographic study of a large TB vaccine trial site in the Western Cape of South Africa and used an empirical bioethics approach to examine how configurations of the human subject intersected with local conceptions of moral agency, personhood and virtue.
Centres
Research
Justin's research has primarily been conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, especially South Africa where his PhD research and postgraduate projects were undertaken. Between 2011 and 2017, Justin worked with a research institute called the South African Tuberculosis Vaccines Iniitiative (SATVI), which conducts TB vaccine trials in the Western Cape. His work explored the effects of these trials on health seeking and delivery, care relations (especially between nurses and patients) and people's attempts to craft lives they consider to be moral, valuable and respectable in areas with high levels of gang violence (http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12266/).
Justin's research with SATVI was conducted within a broader project run by the University of Cape Town's anthropology department on 'Social Markers of TB' (https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2017-04-03-uncovering-the-social-symptoms-of-tb-1). The aim of this project is to explore lived realities of TB in South Africa and how bio- and social markers of TB intersect against the backdrop of enduring legacies of apartheid and the biopolitics of global health.
As part of his current work on the FIEBRE study, Justin explores conceptualisations and enactments of 'good' antimicrobial use for febrile illness among patients, lay publics, healthcare practitioners and scientists in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Myanmar. The study is also concerned with unpacking what care means in the increasingly restrictive prescribing environment being brought about by AMR-related policy and practice. His primary fieldwork will be conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe and will also involve comparative ethnographic and epidemiological analyses across FIEBRE study sites in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.
