The Contingencies of Global Health Science: The Making and Shaping of Transnational Biomedical Knowledge Production in Uganda

In my doctoral research, with an understanding of the historical and political contexts and roles of the research programs in hand, I propose to focus directly on these programs themselves and conduct an institutional ethnography within at least one of them. This represents a methodological expansion on my MPhil research, for which I conducted interviews and used epidemiological publications as primary historical material, as I was unable to do fieldwork in Uganda due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed expansion, to include participant observation and more numerous interviews, will be important in furthering an understanding of the rituals, routines, relationships, processes, and procedures that shape the everyday realities and practices of global health research within the institutions that conduct it. These dimensions form parts of the material and aesthetic environment and the spatial politics in which research takes place, dimensions that have been as yet inaccessible through my desk-based MPhil research.