Position: I am an assistant professor (U.D.) in the Anthropology of Health. I received my Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology (Human Ecology) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC-CH, USA), and an M.A. in Social & Organizational Psychology from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. I have been part of the programma group Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body and am affiliated to the Center for Social Sciences and Global Health (SSGH). I am a steering committee member of Share-Net International, a Dutch knowledge platform on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also am a senior reseacher at UvA's Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) working on mobilising social sciences against epidemic treats trough the EU funded Sonar-Global Project, where I co-lead the Training and Capacity building work package. Over the past years I also have been working with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Through AIGHD I will continue this collaboration until at least 2023 through a ECDC framework contract. Before coming to the UvA, I lived in North Carolina and Tennessee for 13 years, where I worked for NGOs in environmental activism and public health.
Surprise Ecologies & Temporal Vulnerability: Building on Carole Curmley's historical ecological approach, I conducted multisided PhD fieldwork in the United States on the ethnohistory of surprise and expectations among floodplain residents and mitigation officials. I have explored the relationship between temporality (seen as our human being in time) and emergency preparedness and early warning. Out of this I have neen developing the concept of "temporal vulnerability", which integrates objective, hazards perspectives with an emic focus on meaning and interpretation.
Health systems and medical anthropology: Combining anthropology, historical ecology and social-demography, I am keen to focus on the interdisciplinary interaction between socio-ecological transformations and expressions of health and wellbeing. This includes research concerning the mediating role of community health workers linking neighborhoods or villages with clinical or public health care, health system resilience in the face of disasters, preparedness and response to infectious treats, human resources for health, and concepts and practices of care outside biomedical contexts. I have been collaborating with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labor Studies (AIAS) on wage relevant analysis of human resources for health using the Wage Indicator websurvey.
Community health resources and engagement: As a postdoctoral researcher I participated in a 5 year NWO funded project "Developing Sustainable Community Health Resources in Poor Settings in Uganda" in the District of Luwero. This project studied how indigenous roles and networks self-orgnanize health services and care. As a result of this, I have continued to study community health resources and engagement, through projects with for example the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) emergency preparedness section and the Malaria Zero consortium in Haiti. I have been leading the development of a European guidance on communtiy engagement for preparedness and response against infectious treats for all member states.
Human rights to health and SRHR: I have long been involved with HIV research. Most recently I worked with the global human rights to health program "Bridging the Gaps" led by the Dutch Aids Foundation. This project focuses on the human rights to health for drug users, sex workers and LGBT populations in 16 countries and is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have been Chair of the Share-Net International operational research group and am currently a steering committee member of this SRHR knowledge platform.
Teaching: I am currently teaching the undergraduate research methods classes for Anthropology students. I have taught the core course for the interdisciplinary undergraduate minor (and ASW domain) "Global Health, Care and Society", facilitate global health student internships, and coordinate the Global Health, Development and Care master course at the Masters Medical Anthropology and Sociology (MAS). I have also taught courses in UvA Anthropology undergraduate program--such as the Anthropology of Disasters, Introduction to Medical Anthropology, and various writing seminars. I supervises students from various departments in topics related to global health, medical anthropology, human resources for health, historical and human ecology, disasters and emergency management, and program evaluation.
Applied research: Previous to working at the UvA (since 2010), I worked as coordinator for an Eastern Tennessee environmental NGO alliance, Research Associate at UNC-CH's Center for Urban and Regional Studies doing mostly applied research on disaster risk mitigation (e.g. buyout programmes). After obtaining my PhD, I worked as Monitoring, Evaluation, and as Research Manager for the $450 million USAID's Human Resources for Health Capacity Project at IntraHealth International. During my doctoral studies I was a predoctoral socio-demographic trainee at UNC-CH's leading Carolina Population Center where I conducted studies on Turkana herd demography and Indian masculinities.
And finally: Life is better with good music, a windsurfboard, and some compassion and care for all other beings with which we share this planet.