Lottie Howard-Merrill
BSc MSc
Research Fellow
in Social Norms
Lottie is Research Fellow in Social Norms for the Learning Initiative on Norms Exploitation and Abuse (LINEA). She is currently helping finalise the development of LINEA's multi-component (mass media and curriculum-based) intervention to prevent age disparate transactional sex between adolescent girls and adult men in Tanzania. Lottie runs LINEA Network communications, including the LINEA Webinar Series. Lottie is a proud member of the Gender Violence and Health Centre.
Lottie completed her MSc in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research (RSHR) at LSHTM in 2016, and has a BSc in Geography from UCL. She won the best RSHR MSc Summer Project prize for her analysis of qualitative data on girls' school dropout in India informing the Samata Project, one component of the STRIVE research consortium.
Previous to working at LSHTM, Lottie worked for four years in programming, policy and research at various implementing organisations working to prevent violence against women and girls including FGM and child marriage.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
Lottie is a seminar leader for the MSc module Principles of Social Research, and is a personal tutor for Public Health MSc students. Previously Lottie taught on the Sexual Health Distance Learning MSc module.
Research
Lottie's current research concerns social norms, gendered social inequalities, violence against women and girls, and the sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing of adolescent girls. She employs an interdisciplinary theoretical approach to research, most commonly complementing sociological theories of gender and hegemonic masculinities, with concepts of social norms, reference groups and sanctions from social psychology.