School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

My research revolves around three areas:

- Access to basic social services (health, education, and justice) in so-called 'fragile' environments, including dynamics of community engagement and the (mis)use of data. My past research has looked at health facility committees and community health workers in Eastern DR Congo and Burundi, teachers support in Eastern DR Congo, and paralegal aid in Burundi.

My current focus is on the effects of the reparations ordered by the International Criminal Court in Eastern DR Congo and Mali (with Simeon Koroma, Julien Moriceau, Amuda Baba, and many others).

- The livelihoods of displaced people, and their interactions with mobility, health, and education. This includes past field research with returnees in Burundi (with René Claude Niyonkuru) and refugees in Tanzania (with Clayton Boeyink) and work as a co-I in the UKRI GCRF Development-Based Approaches to Protracted Displacement project (2020–23) on improving healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees in eight field sites in Somalia, Eastern DRC, Kenya, and South Africa. I was also the academic lead of Foundations for All, an action research project on widening participation in higher education via blended learning (together with the Refugee Law project at Makerere University and the Centre for Civic Engagement and Community Action at the American University of Beirut).

- The political economy of health reform and health governance. My past fieldwork has looked at the implementation of performance-based financing schemes, the control of the African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in DR Congo (with Alain Mpanya), as well as work carried out on and during the Covid-19 pandemic on the governance response, African elections (led by Thomas Molony), and faith communities engagement in Ituri, Eastern DR Congo (led by Emma Wild-Wood).

I am interested in the development of social science research methods, and my research has used interviews, survey data, archival research, and experiments (and often a mix thereof). At the EFI, I am a co-convener of the Galvanized seminar series, connecting researchers in the sciences, engineering and the arts.

My current PhD students work on NGO accountability (Brenda Youngblood), 'residual' refugees (Tosin Durodala), management frameworks in international aid (Alexander Knapp) , teachers in refugee camps in Ethiopia (Sarah Austin), girls education in Rwanda (Sangwon Park), and persons living with disabilities in Ghana (Francisca Adom-Opare).

Past PhD students: Joshua Anderson-Rose (International Development, 2023, Youth and the Camp: A Time and Place of Waiting. Young people's perspectives of Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi), Kevin Zapata (Social Policy, 2021, From PROGRESA to PROSPERA : understanding change and stability in Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme), Megan Douglas (International Development, 2021, Pursuing the Good Life: displacement, inclusion, and wellbeing among Congolese in Nairobi, Kenya), Annet Nakyeyune (International Development, 2021, Understanding diffusion and adoption of improved cookstove technologies in Uganda through the innovation system perspective), Clayton Boeyink (2020: The politics and practices of refugee self-reliance in trifurcated states of north-western Tanzania) and Boel McAteer Türkmenogülu (2020: Gendering self-reliance: Constructing the ideal refugee wo/man within livelihoods support for displaced Syrians in Turkey).