I joined the Anthropology department as Assistant Professor in August 2015. I am a member of the Health , Care and the Body team.
My work straddles the domains of anthropology, sociology, psychology and public health.
Key research themes.
Central themes in my research are care and morality in the area of reproductive and maternal health. More specifically, I am interested in the normative and moral aspects of sexual, reproductive and maternal health and how these affect community members' and health professionals' behaviours, and the interaction between them. I also study care as practice, and different notions of 'good' care. Through ethnography, discourse and conversation analysis, I seek to illuminate how policies, interventions and care play out on the ground, and contribute to the development of health systems, policies and interventions tailored to local concerns and realities.
Biography
I received a PhD (2007) and MSc in psychology (2002) from the University of Edinburgh and a MA in Psychology ( cum laude) from the Radboud University Nijmegen. Before joining the University of Amsterdam, I was lecturer at the Institute for Global Health and Development (IGHD) at Queen Margaret University. From 2006 until 2008 I worked as postdoctoral researcher in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh on an interdisciplinary ESRC-MRC fellowship . Before that, I worked as researcher in Nursing studies at the University of Edinburgh on a study examining changes in the health visiting service in Scotland and whether it addressed the needs of Pakistani and Chinese mothers in Scotland.
Recent grants & projects
2016: Perceptions of Respectful Maternity CAre in Malawi. An interdisciplinary study, embedded in a project seeking to improve Respectful Care in Malawi, funded by the Scottish Government (PI, Prof. T. Humphrey, Napier University). Using team-ethnography, we explore how midwives, women and guardians conceptualise and enact 'good and 'respectful' care, and how this chimes (or not) with currently popular rights-based Respectul care campaigns.
2014 : 'Generating accountability for maternal health outcomes in Nigeria through audit and improvement of maternity record linkage systems'. Funded by the MacArthur foundation (PI Dr. Julia Hussein, University of Aberdeen; Co-I Women's Health Action Research Centre, Nigeria).
In this project we use discourse analysis to examine the process of maternal death reviews through a detailed analysis of the interactions between different team members in MDR meetings. We seek to unpack the 'black box' of these reviews by examining the discursive strategies used, and their functions and effects for instance in terms of multidisciplinary participation, joint problem solving and managing accountability for maternal deaths .
2012: I was awarded an early career fellowship by the Independent Social Research Foundation to study providers’ and community members’ interpretations of accountability and blame in relation to reproductive loss (e.g. miscarriages, abortions, infertility) and maternal mortality in Malawi. Through this project I seek to contribute to our understanding of accountability 'from below' and people-centred health systems.