Associated Sussex Faculty

Alex Shankland
Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

Dr Alex Shankland is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), where he co-convenes the Accountability for Health Equity Programme. He has worked for more than two decades on health systems, indigenous and minority health, civil society, accountability, political representation and local governance, particularly in Brazil and Mozambique. Alex has also worked extensively on the roles of Brazil and other rising powers in reshaping international development cooperation, carrying out studies of Brazil-Mozambique development cooperation in health and agriculture and of the international development roles of civil society actors from the BRICS countries, and co-founding the IDS Rising Powers in International Development research programme, which is now being taken forward with colleagues from across the University of Sussex campus under the umbrella of the Centre for Rising Powers and Global Development (CRPD). He is currently Principal Investigator of the ESRC/DFID funded project “Vozes Desiguais / Unequal Voices: the Politics of Accountability for Health Equity in Brazil and Mozambique” (£500k over 2.5 years), a partnership with N’weti (Mozambique) and Cebrap (Brazil) that is developing an historically-informed analysis of social, political, market and managerial accountability dynamics in high-inequality urban settings and marginalised rural areas across the two countries. An experienced manager of international and interdisciplinary research and consultancy programmes, prior to completing his DPhil Alex was IDS Research Manager for the DFID-funded Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (£6m over 10 years) and Coordinator of the IDS-led consortium responsible for the redesign of Brazil’s health system for indigenous peoples (£500k over 2 years). Before coming to IDS he worked extensively as a journalist, NGO project and programme manager, independent researcher and social development consultant, mainly in South America (especially Brazilian Amazonia) and Southern Africa.

Mei Treuba
Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Dr Mei Treuba is a Lecturer in Global Health and enjoys an interdisciplinary academic background with degrees in Nursing, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Occupational Health and Safety, Social Development and Comparative and Cross-Cultural Research Methods. She obtained a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in 2014. She has over 10 years' experience of work in the public and private health sectors and as an Occupational Health Adviser both in Catalonia and the UK. She also has experience of research and development work in Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, UK and the USA, where she worked for the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Before joining the Global Health Team at BSMS, Mei was the course leader of the International Health MSc at the Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development (University of Leeds). She has also worked as Visiting Lecturer at the School of Applied Social Sciences (University of Brighton) and as a as programme evaluator in Chile.

External members

Zimran Samuel
Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers

Zimran Samuel is an experienced human rights practitioner with a wide ranging practice based around children law, mental health law and international law. He is regularly instructed in significant cases involving vulnerable adults and medical treatment decisions brought under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court and in the Court of Protection.

Acting for Local Authorities, parents and children, Zimran has had extensive exposure to care proceedings involving children who have suffered from non-accidental head injuries, long term neglect, sexual abuse and manipulated or factitious illness. In respect of international children law, Zimran is a noted specialist on international relocation, child abduction, radicalisation cases, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Prior to coming to the Bar, Zimran worked at the Office of Legal Affairs at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He regularly attended meetings of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. Zimran retains a strong interest in public international law and the international protection of human rights. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC)  and holds a position as a Fellow, the London School of Economics.

Soraya Fleischer
Department of Anthropology, University of Brasilia

Soraya Fleischer has a PhD in Anthropology and works in the Anthropology Department of the University of Brasília/Brazil. From 2015-2016 Soraya held a visiting scholar appointment at the Anthropology Department of the Johns Hopkins University. Soraya lectures on medical anthropology, research methods and ethics, anthropology and the labour market and anthropology and literature. She strongly believes in collaborative research and writing among academic and grassroots researchers. Her most recent publications have explored midwifery in the Brazilian amazon; high blood pressure in urban peripheries; methodology; Brazilian health services. Currently, Soraya is the editor of the journal Anuário Antropológico and Revista Brasileira de Informação Bibliográfica em Ciências Sociais – BIB.

Soraya’s collaborative project launched a blog at the end of 2017 featuring ‘micro-stories’ written from the ethnographic material collected in the city of Recife (Brazil) during the Zika virus epidemics. The idea is to get the word out there, beyond academic writing and into the general public.

Bernice Kuang
Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading

Dr Bernice Kuang has a professional and academic background in family planning, reproductive health, fertility, and union formation.  She has worked in family planning service provision at a family planning clinic in Boston, Massachusetts and as a technical advisor to the USAID funded Health Policy Project focused on improving family planning services in Latin American and Sub-Saharan African countries. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University and completed her PhD research at the University of Southampton on union formation and fertility in the Philippines, with a focus on nonmarital fertility and cohabitation.   Currently, Bernice works as a post-doctoral research assistant on a mixed methods project co-based at the University of Reading and the University of Sussex examining son preference among U.K migrants.

Papreen Nahar
Department of Anthropology, Durham University
Division of Population Health, Health Services Research, & Primary Care, University of Manchester

Dr Papreen Nahar has a PhD and a Master’s in Medical Anthropology. She also has a Master’s and Honor’s in Child Development and Family Relations. Papreen is affiliated as a Research Fellow at the Durham University’s Department of Anthropology and the University of Manchester’s Division of Population Health, Health Service Research and Primary Care.

Thematic expertise and interests: Marginality and Inequalities in Health, Co-designed digital health interventions, Gender, Society and Medicines, Ethnicity and wellbeing, Patient’s experience, Global health, Health Service.

Research Topics: Childlessness & Infertility, mHealth, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Wellbeing of Bangladeshi diaspora in UK, Self-management and chronic conditions, Reproductive Health and Sexuality, Primary Care and Health Service, Natural disasters.

Geographic expertise: Bangladesh, India, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and BME population in UK.

Advisory

Ayo Wahlberg
Institute for Anthropology, University of Copenhagen 

Professor Ayo Wahlberg works broadly within the field of social studies of (bio)medicine. Over the past ten years, he has been working in the field of selective reproductive technologies, having carried out in depth ethnographic fieldwork at China’s and the world’s largest fertility clinic and associated sperm bank in Changsha, Hunan province. Ayo recently received a prestigious grant from the European Research Council for a 5-year (2015-2020) project entitled ‘The vitality of disease – quality of life I the making’ and is currently carrying out ethnographic research in Denmark in the field of clinical genetics.

Graduate associates

Kate Austin
Florence Nightingale Faulty of Nursing and Midwifery, Kings College London

Kate Austin is currently a final year Student Midwife at King's College London, and divides her time between university studies and clinical work at a large London maternity unit. Kate is a Sussex alumni, holding a BA in Anthropology (First Class Honours 2011-2014). Her research interests include maternal and infant health, the medicalisation and politics of childbirth and risk management in maternity care. Kate’s recently published a paper entitled ‘Constructions of risk and the maternal body: implications for midwifery practice’ in MDIRS Midwifery Digest.

For the full list of CORTH members see: People and contacts