I have a BA in political science from Vassar College and an MA in Legal & Political Theory from University College London (UCL). I have studied, worked and lived in Kenya and Tanzania since 2008, with research consulting firms, think tanks and non-profits. This experience in policy research spaces lends itself to my teaching on health policy at LSHTM. I also worked as a research consultant for UZIKWASA, a community organisation in Pangani, Tanzania engaging communities in developing grassroots social change. With a background in political theory, my main research focus at LSHTM is on community engagement in emergent disease outbreaks.
Affiliations
Teaching
I am the Module Organiser (MO) for the Health Policy: Process & Power (HPPP) module at LSHTM. I have also lectured on community engagement for the University of Oxford's Clinical Research During Outbreaks (CREDO) module, Georgetown University's Engaging Communities for Health course, and contribute to the Gender Violence & Health Centre's annual short course on Researching Gender-Based Violence: Methods and Meaning.
Research
I am part of the African Coalition for Epidemic Research, Response and Training (ALERRT), working on the consortium's community engagement and social science work package. I am also the community engagement lead for AViD, a five-country project on the anthropology of vaccine deployment in emergencies, supporting the design of innovative community engagement strategies for qualitative health research. I designed and led deliberative engagement training and strategies with community health workers (CHWs) in Tanzania to improve the relevance and quality of health promotion work around COVID-19 vaccines. My PhD is on deliberative engagement with communities about vaccine trials and public health responses to emergent diseases. In all of this work, I think research can contribute to dismantling systems of domination and oppression if we have high expectations—of ourselves, of communities—and ask great questions.
Selected Publications
