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
Department of Global Health and Development
Faculty of Public Health and Policy
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鈥攐f ourselves, of communities鈥攁nd ask great questions.
Research Area
Infectious disease policy
Policy analysis
Political science
Vaccine confidence
Health policy
Social and structural determinants of health
Ethnography
Qualitative research
Colonialism
Disease and Health Conditions
COVID-19
Emerging infectious diseases
Infectious diseases
Ebola virus
Country
Kenya
Tanzania
Region
Sub-Saharan Africa (all income levels)
Selected Publications
2024
Anthropologica
2024
BMJ
2024
PLOS global public health
2022
Key Considerations: Cross-Border Dynamics Between Uganda and Tanzania in the Context of the Outbreak of Ebola, 2022
2022
Frontiers in sociology
2021
PloS one
2021
BMC Public Health
2020
CULTURE HEALTH & SEXUALITY
2020
UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).
2019
GET AFRICA: AFRICAN NEWSLETTER ON EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES & BIOSECURITY
