Research
I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Visiting Scientist on the HORN Project, based at ILRI, Nairobi. I am currently leading a transdiciplinary One Health study of urban rivers.
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In October 2018, I won a grant as part of the GIAA (Global Impact Acceleration Account) which is part of the GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund). The grant for £25,000 allowed me to co-create a photography exhibition and narratives from indigenous healers in Kenya. It was exhibited at the National Museums in Nairobi and in Liverpool.
As part of my role as a visiting scientist at ILRI, I am supervising and capacity building with Kenyan postgraduate students. I have taught qualitative methods and ethics during the HORN summer school, masterclass and lead teams at the sandpit event to win funding to undertake their chosen research. I am also supervisor to two of these research teams. I designed and taught an online masterclass in qualitative research in 2021.
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I am PI on the Rongai Rivers Project. This study, in collaboration with Kenyan scientists and creatives, uses urban rivers in the town of Ongata Rongai just outside of Nairobi as the starting point for research activities. It uses a One Health perspective to shed light on practices which affect human, livestock and environmental health and help us to better understand the importance of conserving urban waterways. It has a strong public engagement focus from the start, and has gained support from local residents groups, county offices, and key stakeholders.
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My previous research project explores long term livelihood change in Tanzania in collaboration with Professor Daniel Brockington at the University of Sheffield. We collaborated with a number of fellow Tanzania-focused researchers in various disciplines.
Our findings from the Livelihoods Project unlock significant insights into local notions of wealth and poverty, asset ownership, and the longitudinal effect of crop price fluctuation on rural subsistence farmers and their domestic units. To do this, we used data from surveys conducted in the recent past and re-surveyed these same domestic units to provide a picture of long term change, or indeed stability.
My doctoral research is an ethnographic study of home brewed alcohol in rural Kenya. My thesis is entitled Drinking, Despair and The State: An Ethnography of a Brewing Subculture in Rural Kenya.
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