School of Social and Political Science

Kathy Dodworth

Research Fellow

Kathy Dodworth
kathy.dodworth@ed.ac.uk
Google Scholar
https://www.linkedin.com/in/Kathy Dodworth/
https://twitter.com/@dodgington/
Edinburgh
UK

Research interests

Global health policy Health & Well-being Historical approaches to science, technology and medicine International development International Development Cluster Methods

+Legitimacy; Practice Theory; Representation; Voluntarism; State-Society Relations; NGOs; Non-State Actors; Political Ethnography; Tanzania; Kenya; China; NHS.

Overview

Wellcome Trust Research Fellow looking at the recruitment of Community Health Volunteers in Kenya.

There are two strands to my work. The first is non-state actors, NGOs and now companies, and how such entities create the public authority to act. This was the basis of my monograph: Legitimation as Political Practice (CUP 2022). I am interested in where state and non-state actors coproduce and co-depend, what I term the non/state. My recent work looks at the Chinese non/state in east Africa.

The second is the negotiation of the non/state in everyday life, through voluntary labour in Tanzania and now Kenya with my Wellcome Trust grant: 'Recruited, Mobilized, Conscripted'. The project combines historical perspectives on unpaid labour, and its promotion by various non/state agencies, with ethnographic fieldwork in Isiolo to understand how voluntary labour is realised today.

Teaching
  • Anthropology of Global Health (PG) 2024, Lecturer
  • Foundations of Knowledge (Medical School UG) 2019, Lecturer
  • Africa in Contemporary World (Pre-Hons) 2018, Senior Tutor
  • Governance, Poverty, Development in Africa (PG) 2014-16, Lecturer & Tutor
  • Africa in International Politics (PG) 2015, Lecturer
  • Africa in World Politics (Honours) 2015, Lecturer & Tutor
  • Research in Africa (PG) 2015, Lecturer
  • Interpreting Development Institutions (PG) 2014, Lecturer
  • Approaches to Politics and IR (Honours) 2012-14, Tutor

Background

I completed my PhD at Edinburgh in 2018: 'Legitimation as practice: crafting space to govern in Tanzania', which won the school's Outstanding Thesis Award. I joined the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society 2018-2020 to look at public engagement in the NHS. Before academia, I worked for several INGOs in sub-Saharan Africa on education and health.

Works within

Publications by user content

Publication Research Explorer link
Dodworth K, Mukungu BN. 'Our hands are bound': Pathways to community health labour in Kenya. Social Science & Medicine. 2023 Sept 1;332:116126. Epub 2023 Jul 27. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116126
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Dodworth K. [Review of] NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2021. African Affairs. 2022 Oct;121(485):675–677. Epub 2022 Sept 12. doi: 10.1093/afraf/adac027
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Stewart E, Dodworth K, Ercia A. The everyday work of hospital campaigns: Public knowledge and activism in the UK's National Health Services. In Crane J, Hand J, editors, Posters, protests, and prescriptions: Cultural histories of the National Health Service in Britain. Manchester University Press. 2022. (Social Histories of Medicine).
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Dodworth K. Legitimation as Political Practice: Crafting Everyday Authority in Tanzania. Cambridge University Press, 2022. 256 p. doi: 10.1017/9781009030397
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Stewart E, Dodworth K, Ercia A. The everyday work of hospital campaigns: public knowledge and activism in the UK’s NHS. In Crane J, Hand J, editors, Posters, protests and prescriptions: Cultural histories of the National Health Service in Britain. Manchester University Press. 2022
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Stewart E, Dodworth K. ‘The biggest charity you’ve never heard of’: Institutional logics of charity and the state in public fundraising in Scotland’s NHS. Journal of Social Policy. 2021 Jul 27;1-22. doi: 10.1017/S0047279421000520
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Dodworth K. 'A real African Woman!' Multipositionality and its effects in the field. Ethnography. 2021 Jun 1;22(2):164-183. Epub 2018 Oct 9. doi: 10.1177/1466138118802951
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Dodworth K, Stewart E. Legitimating complementary therapies in the NHS: campaigning, care and epistemic labour. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. 2020 Jun 7. Epub 2020 Jun 7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459320931916
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Dodworth K. Negotiating the public: Voluntarism and its work in Tanzania. African Affairs. 2019 Jan;118(470):125–146. Epub 2018 Oct 8. doi: 10.1093/afraf/ady047
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Dodworth K. Multipositionality in the 'Field'. In Crawford G, Kruckenberg L, Loubere N, Morgan R, editors, Understanding Global Development Research : Fieldwork Issues, Experiences and Reflections. 1 ed. SAGE Publications Ltd. 2017
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Dodworth K. The politics of voluntarism in Tanzania. 2015. Paper presented at BISA 2015 Conference, London, United Kingdom.
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Dodworth K. NGO legitimation as practice: Working state capital in Tanzania. Critical African Studies. 2014;6(1):22-39. Epub 2014 Mar 6. doi: 10.1080/21681392.2014.889522
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