I am an anthropologist and human geographer with expertise in the social study of antimicrobial resistance, a result of an ongoing interest in the examination of the diversity of socionatural configurations. My doctoral research at the University of Aberdeen traversed interesting materialities routes, investigating the role ritual ceremony, geomancy and local deities play in Himalayan in political questions of environment, development and health. I then acted as teaching fellow in anthropology at the University of Exeter; there I was influenced by the philosophies of Science and Technology Studies, applying them to further explain moral cosmologies of health and the environment in Himalayan development encounters.
It was through alliances at Exeter that I became interested in the social study of microbes, and I acted as postdoctoral researcher for an international multidisciplinary collaboration examining the socioeconomic drivers for antimicrobial use in Bangladesh’s aquaculture industry. As the role environments—particularly aquatic environments—play in the emergence and distribution of AMR is increasingly understood, I turn my attention to how socioeconomic change and development—for example the intensification of food production, changes to healthcare delivery, or expansion of urban water systems—stimulate environmental perturbations that facilitate the evolution and acceleration of AMR, and which open new pathways for transmission between humans, non-human animals and the environment. I have recently joined the University of Helsinki’s sociology department as postdoctoral researcher for AMRIWA, a position that affords me the opportunity to pursue these interests by examining microbes in the social context of development in West Africa.