School of Social and Political Science

Background

Health Care Sustainability

My current research focuses on the material politics of health care waste. Current health systems are premised on the manufacture, transportation and disposal of millions of tons of single-use plastic products every year. I am interested in how we came to build this linear economy of health care, what impacts it is having on people, and what people are trying to do to solve this problem. I work with biomedical engineers to explore how social science and engineering knowledge can be brought together in order to develop more sustainable and equitable global health innovation systems. 

Investigating Diagnostic Devices in Global Health

The DiaDev project, Investigating the Design and Use of Diagnostic Devices in Global Health, explores the emergent role that diagnostic devices are playing in the transformation of global health partnerships and national health systems in low and middle-income countries. Drawing on novel conceptual and methodological tools from social anthropology, it investigates the social, cultural and technical processes involved in developing, deploying and using diagnostic devices in resource-limited settings. The goal is to improve our understanding of relationships between technological innovation and health systems strengthening, with a view to guiding global health policy.

Hospitals in Resource-Limited Settings

Research onhospitals in resource-limited settings explores the ways in which people engage with biomedical technologies in conditions of uncertainty and precariousness. My book, Biomedicine in an Unstable Place: Infrastructure and Personhood in a Papua New Guinean Hospital is published by Duke University Press.

Global Health in Fragile States

Research on global health governance has examined the ways in which managerial technologies travel to places of state absence or fragility. I am interested in the ways in which managerial knowledge practices have increasingly underpinned global health in recent years and the emergence of management as form of a state-building in an era of securitisation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a government health office it has examined issues of bureaucratic materiality and managerial personhood and expertise.

Humanitarian Goods

Research on 'Off the Grid' infrastructures examines the relationships that are built into and sustain physical infrastructures for health in locations that are beyond the reach of centrally planned public infrastructures. I examine “humanitarian goods”, such as rapid diagnostic kits or fortified foods, that are developed through public-private partnerships as technical solutions to fragile health systems. In 2013 I was awarded one of the ESRC’s first grants under its new ‘Transforming Social Science’ scheme for a comparative study of infrastructures for living “off the grid”.

Publicly Available Lectures

Lab on a Chip - Engineering Sustainable Futures

Rethinking Infrastructure for Global Health

The Nutraceutical Self

Technologies Designed for Sparse Environments

Mobile Laboratories: Integrating Diagnostics with Health Infrastructure

For further information please visit my profile on Academia 

Find more information on our MSc in Medical Anthropology page

Recent Publications

2023        ‘Bring me a test and I will raise the world: Toward an anthropology of the possible in global health’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (In press: due for publication as part of special issue on ‘After failure’.

2023        ‘The ready to hand test: diagnostic availability and usability in Sierra Leone’ PLOS Global Public Health (In press)

2022        ‘Human preparedness: Relational infrastructures and medical countermeasures in Sierra Leone’. Global Public Health 22(1):1-17 (Co-authored with Shona Lee, Ann H Kelly, Eva Vernooij, Luisa Enria, James Rogers, Rashid Ansumana, Mahmood H. Bangura, and Shelley Lee. Joint lead author with Shona Lee).

2022        The hidden burden of medical testing: Public view and experiences of Covid-19 testing as a social and ethical process, BMC Public Health 22(1):1-13. (Co-authored with Shona Lee and Imogen Bevan. Lead author)

2022        To Fail at Scale!: Minimalism and Maximalism in Humanitarian Entrepreneurship, Social Anthropology 30(2): 101-119 (Co-authored with Jamie Cross – equal contributions)

2022        Diagnostic Waste, Whose Responsibility? Globalization and Health 18, no. 1 (2022): 1-7. (with Eva Vernooij, and Mohamed Hashim Rogers. Lead author).

2022        Engineering a sustainable future for point-of-care diagnostic and single-use microfluidic devices, Lab on a Chip (online first). (Co-authored with Alfredo Edoardo Ongaro, Zibusiso Ndlovu, Elodie Sollier, Collins Otieno, Pascale Ondoa, and Maïwenn Kersaudy-Kerhoas. (Joint senior author. Contributed to conceptualisation, background research, writing, editing)

2022        Global Health, Accelerated: Rapid diagnostics and the fragile solidarities of ‘emergency R&D’." Economy and Society 51(2): 187-210. (Co-authored with Ann Kelly and Javier Lezaun. Equal contributions).

2021        Patient Pathways and Diagnostic Value in Sierra Leone.
Medicine Anthropology Theory 8, 1–11 (Co-authored with Fatmatah Bah and Eva Vernooij. Led on conceptualisation, methodology and writing)

2021        Acceptability and perceived utility of different diagnostic tests and sample types for trachoma surveillance in the Bijagos Islands, Guinea Bissau.Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 115, 847–853 (Co-authored with Ramandeep Singh Sahota, Salimato Sanha, Anna Last, Eunice Cassama, Adriana Goncalves, Ann H. Kelly, and Emma M. Harding-Esch)

2021        Responsibility, repair and care in Sierra Leone’s health system. Social Science and Medicine (pre-publication online) (Co-authored with Eva Vernooij and Frances Koker)

2021        Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior Related to COVID-19 Testing: A Rapid Scoping Review. Diagnostics, 11(9):1685. (Co-authored with Imogen Bevan, Mats Stage Baxter, Helen R Stagg)

2020        Building diagnostic systems in Sierra Leone: The role of point-of-care devices in laboratory strengthening. African Journal of Laboratory Medicine 9, no. 2 (2020): 1-5. (Co-authored with Rashid Ansumana, Fatmata Bah, Ann H Kelly, Francess Koker, James Rogers, Doris Harding, Eva Vernooij, Isatta Wurie. Lead author).

2019        A cross-sectional survey of practices and knowledge among antibiotic retailers in Nairobi, Kenya. Journal of global health 9(2) (Co-authored with Dishon Muloi, Eric M. Fevre, Judy Bettridge, Robert Rono, Daniel Ong'are, James M. Hassell, Maurice K. Karani. Contribution to conceptualisation, methodology and editing)

2019        Health, Institutions and Governance in Melanesia. In The Melanesian World. Hirsch, E. & Rollason, W. (eds.). 1 ed., Routledge. p. 300-314

2018        Ghostly Ethics. Medical Anthropology 37, 703–707

2017        Deep diagnostics. Limn, 9. Little Development Devices/Humanitarian Goods

2017        Preface: Little development devices/Humanitarian goods. Limn, 9. (Co-authored with Jamie Cross, Stephen Collier and Peter Redfield. Equal authorship).

2016        The hospital and the hospital: Infrastructure, human tissue, labour and the scientific production of relational value, Social Studies of Science 46, 938–960.

2016        Making people care. The Lancet 387, 333–334.