Professor Sandy Oliver, University of Portsmouth
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Professor of Public Policy at UCL Social Research Institute and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. Prof. Oliver has 30 years experience of working at the interface of research and policy or practice. She is a leader in the field of research synthesis methodology and has worked with academics and other stakeholders to maximise the usefulness, communication, and application of research knowledge. Her current interdisciplinary research, in collaboration with academics and civil society organisations in Juba, compares cultural heritage with evidence underpinning humanitarian aid.
For over a decade she has been supporting researchers in the global south prepare systematic reviews addressing policy priorities. Her expertise in social science was recognised in 2015 by the Campbell Collaboration, with the Robert Boruch Award for Distinctive Contributions to Research that Informs Public Policy.
Dr. Angela Crack, University of Portsmouth
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Dr. Angela Crack is a Reader of Civil Society. She specialises in NGO accountability, the relationships of development NGOs with local communities, the role of language and translation in NGO development work, NGO self-regulation, and NGO-donor relations. She has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals on these issues, as well as providing expert advice to numerous international NGOs. She recently concluded a major AHRC-funded project with the University of Reading and the civil society organisation, INTRAC, titled: The Listening Zones of NGOs. The project explored the role that languages and cultural knowledge play in the policies and practices of development NGOs, and Angela conducted the fieldwork in Malawi.
The project provided innovative policy recommendations that were adopted by several NGOs in Malawi and Peru. The project’s findings are contained in Angela’s recent book, co-authored with her project partners, Professor Hilary Footitt and Dr. Wine Tesseur: Development NGOs and Languages: Listening, Power and Inclusion (Palgrave 2020). For the ‘Youth Voices’ project, Angela will use her accountability/language expertise to inform analysis of the findings and the production of a ‘tool-kit’ of recommendations for NGOs.
Dr. Mukdarut Bangpan, EPPI-Centre, UCL Social Research Institute
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Dr. Mukdarut Bangpan’s research focuses on gender, equity, and international development, in particular, it aims to build evidence-based results to inform the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions to improve the livelihoods and well-being of children and women. She is interested in applying intersectionality and equity lens in research and developing methodological approaches in evidence synthesis and research impact in development.
Her recent research focuses on access to health and education for migrants, social factors influencing sexual health decisions of young women, and the mental health and psychological well-being of populations affected by humanitarian crises. She works with international partners building capacity in evidence synthesis with policy and academics in South Asia, South East Asia region. Mukdarut leads the international development module and online systematic review design and planning module at Social Research Institute, UCL. She supervises MSc and PhD students who are interested in conducting research in the intersections and relations between sexuality, gender, migration, equity in development contexts.
Georgia Hales, University of Leeds
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Having been partly influenced to do Civil and Environmental Engineering by recognising it as ‘masculine’ and therefore perceptibly more prestigious degree, it wasn’t until I began learning about WASH that I became truly enthused. Its main appeal was its intersection of the technical sides of engineering with the social and political. I soon learned of the intrinsic gender-related issues within WASH services, and how the solutions require participation from all genders. With this idea, my master’s thesis looked into what schoolboys in India were being taught about menstrual hygiene management (MHM) and the associated perceptions of their teachers. The findings coincided with the notion that ‘what cannot be talked about, will not change’ (Government of India, 2015, p.5).
After the degree I went to work in Moria refugee camp on Lesvos island, Greece. Here it became obvious that listening to or observing (when language barriers exist) the needs of end-users was key to delivering an appropriate WASH service. For instance, used sanitary pads blocking the cisterns and pipes (or being handed directly to me) demonstrated to us that women needed bins within the toilet blocks. And hearing of many cases of gender-based violence during the night indicated that a toilet and shower block in a location accessible only for the ‘vulnerable women’ section was needed.
Basing my research on these experiences, I am aiming to look into the delivery of MHM in refugee/displaced persons settings and the ways in which women and girls can be put at the centre of decision-making, without adding to their ‘triple burden’ of roles or creating negative consequences on their personal, household or community lives (Moser, 1989, p.1802). I will also look at the role of men as family, community members and service providers and how they can influence the level of MHM service delivery available to women and girls in these settings.
Hannah Jayne Robinson, University of Leeds
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Gender is a multidimensional and interdisciplinary topic I have been interested in for a decade, but was not the focus of my research interests until my PhD. I am currently studying at the University of Leeds, and am developing my PhD around Gender and WASH. I want to look at how we design WASH spaces (with specific reference to guidelines), how we can improve these spaces, and what internal and external factors lead to the implementation of appropriate, safe and hygienic spaces.
I first began understand the complexities and intricacies of gender 3 years ago during my undergraduate degree. Here I looked at how menstruators dispose and wash their used menstrual items; something that is typically gendered in today’s society, but in fact should be associated with an individual’s biology (not all those who identify as women bleed, and for a lot of differing reasons). Therefore ‘gendered needs’ and ‘gender-friendly’ designs, especially in terms of WASH provision need to be designed holistically to capture the full reach of gender within the sector. So now, I am interested in gender, but particularly with how it coincides and interacts with biological needs.
Currently, I am in Leeds, working on my PhD, reading lots of books, trying to keep all my plants alive, and taking lots of walks to cure the UK lockdown monotony.
Ruth Sylvester, University of Leeds
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The social aspects of WASH captured my interest during my master’s degree, in particular learning about how gender interacts with WASH. This made it clear that enabling effective services requires engagement with the broader societal and political environments, rather than simply ‘working out’ the engineering, as I had assumed. I have always been interested in politics and feminism, but this was separate from my academic studies which were mostly in the natural sciences. I feel so fortunate that the interdisciplinary nature of WASH has allowed me to bring together my personal and academic interests.
My research attention is on how people of multiple different social identities access and use WASH services. This relates to local and global issues of politics, patriarchy, and social justice. I intend to analyse the gender approaches that are applied to WASH policy, with the hypothesis that they are dominated by western feminist thought. My PhD will employ participatory methods, with the intention of creating spaces for people to express their socially determined WASH needs. This will be conducted alongside political economy analyses, accounting for the impositions placed on WASH services by the global development system. In an effort to avoid the often problematic use of the term ‘gender’ within development discourse, I will ground my research in intersectionality theory. Intersectionality adds essential variety and nuance to gender and development studies. As one scholar illustrates, referring to gender mainstreaming in South Africa; “you cannot talk about gender in this country without talking about race” (Mannell, 2012, p.430).
Elfatih Maluk Atem Beny (Elfatih Atem), Likikiri Collective
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Elfatih Atem is the founding Executive Director of Likikiri Collective and has worked in a leadership capacity for many national Sudanese and South Sudanese cultural projects, as well as a consultant in culture, heritage, and the arts for international NGOs and the UN. He is also an artist, writer, dramatist, and media practitioner who has produced poems, prose, plays, radio productions, and short films and taught in these areas.
Atem has developed expertise in documenting and researching intangible and tangible cultural heritage. He has led projects documenting folktales which have led to theatre festivals and teaching anthologies.
He was a national coordinator on UNESCO’s pilot traveling exhibition in South Sudan in 2014 – 15; a consultant developing the nomination of Deim Zubeir as a World Heritage tentative list citation; a researcher and videographer on a project documenting the gugu (Zande slit drum); and a Co-I on the Art Heritage and Resilience in South Sudan project and the AHRC Decolonizing Curriculum network grant. He also produces short films, leads projects in participatory filmmaking, and published a book of poetry in Arabic titled Ajong.
Rebecca Lorins, Likikiri Collective and University of Juba
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Rebecca Lorins is an educator, scholar, trained oral historian, and culture practitioner. She conducted her PhD research with Kwoto, a South Sudanese popular theatre troupe operating in Khartoum from 1993 – 2006. She has been living and working in South Sudan since 2014. Besides her role at Likikiri, Rebecca is an assistant professor and the Dean of the School of Journalism, Media and Communication Studies at the University of Juba.
Rebecca specializes in research and practice in the arts and humanities and has expertise in oral history. She has supported the folktale documentation project as well as Likikiri’s ReStorying project. She has also co-led a series of oral history, documentation, and memorialization projects, including one on the 1992 Juba Massacre and one on personal histories of education with students and faculty from South Sudanese Universities.
She was a Co-I on the Art Heritage and Resilience in South Sudan project as well as an AHRC Decolonizing Curriculum network grant. She is mentoring the Likikiri team in producing a series of zines and documentary radio programmes for the art heritage project.