Social Scientist and participatory co-production research specialist
A social scientist with more than 20 years of experience working in collaborative participatory research, education, management and consultancy. Expertise in innovative co-production and participatory action research approaches and methods, capacity strengthening and multilateral knowledge exchange in global health. Extensive experience in designing, delivering and evaluating impactful research with communities and stakeholders in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the UK. A steering group member of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research. Podcast host and co-founder of Connecting Citizens to Science podcast hosting many of LSTMs research programmes.
I have worked collaboratively within communities, government partnerships, research institutions, and NGOs delivering high-quality outputs including peer-reviewed publications, national strategy documents, policy briefs, case studies, training manuals, learning packs and multimedia.
Teaching and capacity strengthening at LSTM
Regularly support capacity strengthening and teaching for participatory and qualitative research methods. Offers PhD supervision and writing support for researchers.
Connecting Citizens to Science Podcast
Host and co-founder of Connecting Citizens to Science, a global health podcast. Published over 70 episodes and listened to in over 115 countries. The podcast covers topics like health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare, mental health, vector-borne diseases, climate change, and co-production approaches.
Previous roles at LSTM
Knowledge for Development K4D
A previous research officer with the K4D programme which provided a range of learning activities, evidence, and knowledge services primarily for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) but also across other UK government departments as well as for other development partners, strengthening the systematic use of learning and evidence to develop policy and programming that meets development challenges. K4D developed interdisciplinary ‘learning journeys’ using a range of approaches to share knowledge and experience across UK government and with other development partners. The research helpdesk service and emerging issue reports provide high quality syntheses of evidence and knowledge to support policy and programme work and future thinking.
COUNTDOWN: Calling Time on Neglected Tropical Diseases, A programme of Implementation Research to Inform the Effective and Sustainable Scaling-Up of Integrated Neglected Tropical Disease Control Initiatives (UK AID). A co-investigator within the COUNTDOWN programme and collaborated with multi-disciplinary researchers, health systems actors and communities across Liberia, Nigeria and Cameroon to support the design and delivery of participatory action research.
ARISE: The GCRF Accountability for Informal Urban Equity Hub (UKRI-GCRF). A research co-investigator within the ARISE hub supporting the development of community-based participatory research across Kenya, Bangladesh, India and Sierra Leone. Worked closely with the team in Bangladesh to design and analyse participatory methods and embed community co-researchers living in informal settlements within all research phases. Facilitated a dedicated sub-group focused on strengthening capacities and conditions for community-based participatory research resulting in Competencies and conditions for co-production in research partnerships: A framework.
Directors Catalyst Fund: Developing a model for progressing and monitoring governance, leadership and accountability for Primary health Care in a municipal health department: A Case study from Guatemala.
GOBLAR - Identify, progress and monitor improved urban health governance, leadership, and accountability in Guatemala
Funded by the Directors Catalyst Fund, this research applied a participatory action research approach with urban municipal actors, as co-researchers, to develop an online innovative tool to systematically identify, progress and monitor improved governance, leadership, accountability and multisectoral policies and practices within Guatemala- known as GOBLAR (Spanish abbreviation). The process to identify governance performance was participatory and promoted the involvement of various sectors and community leaders by encouraging dialogue and coordination to define the status, develop improvement actions and monitor their progress.