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 Relations Research Group Social studies of biology and medicine

+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, primarily NGOs and now companies, and how such private entities create public authority to act. This was the basis of my doctoral research and recent monograph: Legitimation as Political Practice: Crafting Everyday Authority in Tanzania (CUP 2022). I am interested in where state and non-state actors coproduce particular effects, what I term the non/state, whereby practices, practicalities and people overlap and become enmeshed. My most recent work looks at the Chinese non/state in east Africa.

The second is the negotiation of the non/state in everyday life. In Tanzania, I interviewed NGO volunteers, effectively conscripted via the state to undertake unpaid community work. Recruitment is the basis of my Wellcome Trust grant: 'Recruited, Mobilized, Conscripted? Leveraging community health work, citizenship and public authority in northern Kenya'. The project employs a critical approach to volunteer recruitment / promotion by global health agencies, NGOs and the state, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in Isiolo County to understand how voluntary labour is negotiated today.

Teaching

Nominated for EUSA teaching award 2015. Taught on:

  • Africa in Contemporary World (pre-hons) 2018, Senior Tutor
  • Governance, Poverty, Development in Africa (PG) 2014-16, Tutor & Guest Lecturer
  • Africa in International Politics (PG) 2015, Guest Lecturer
  • Africa in World Politics (Honours) 2015, Tutor & Guest Lecturer
  • Approaches to Politics and IR (Honours) 2012-14, Tutor
  • Research in Africa (PG) 2015, Guest Lecturer
  • Interpreting development institutions (PG), Guest Lecturer

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
    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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