I am a member of the Department of Global Health and Development. My research builds on a multi-disciplinary training in Human Sciences and a DPhil (which combined methods and approaches current in social and biological anthropology) from Oxford University. Research questions typically emerge from extensive periods of ethnographic fieldwork, and engage with contemporary ideas in social, medical and political anthropology. Where appropriate, findings are used to both critique and enhance public health policies and practice. Topics investigated include: epidemic preparedness and response; mental health and healing in war zones; social and political legacies of mass forced displacement; medical humanitarianism, and biosocial approaches to the control of neglected tropical diseases in Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania.
In 2014, I established the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform with colleagues from Sierra Leone and the UK. This proved a useful model for enabling expertise across the social sciences to usefully inform the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and the Platform now engages with a broader range of issues through the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform. In 2020 and 2021, I contributed to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours and the ethnicity subgroup of SAGE.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I teach on the modules 'Principles in Social Research', 'Conflict and Health, and 'Medical Anthropology and Public Health'.
I am also a tutor on the MSc 'Public Health for Development' and I have PhD students working on epidemic preparedness in refugee settings, maternal health, biosocial anthropology, neglected tropical diseases and the impact of Ebola on health systems in West Africa.
Research
Research
I have wide-ranging research interests in the anthropology of global health policies and medical humanitarianism. This involves contributing to the following multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects:
Pandemic preparedness: local and global concepts and practices in tackling disease threats in Africa
Centre for Public Authority and International Development
Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform
RECAP – Research capacity building and knowledge generation to support preparedness and response to humanitarian crises and epidemics.
Return, Responsibility and Reintegration in Central Africa: A multi-disciplinary exploration into endemic violence and social repair
Building resilient health systems: lessons from international, national and local emergency responses to the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone