School of Social and Political Science

Dr Kathy Dodworth

Honorary 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 Identities & Inequalities International Development Cluster Methods Politics and political violence Social studies of biology and medicine Work & Economy

+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

Kathy Dodworth's Research Explorer profile