About

I am a social anthropologist with a long-standing interest in technology and welfare in East Africa

I am a social anthropologist at the University of Oslo, based at the Centre for Development and the Environment, and currently lead the project Bits, bytes and bodies: ‘Local innovation’ and digital healthcare in Tanzania, funded by the Norwegian Research Council (2023 – 2027)

I am interested in how diverse forms of expertise are imagined, deployed and (re)negotiated within the epistemological hierarchies that have historically underpinned efforts to alleviate poverty and ill-health.

My research interests began with a study of so-called unconditional cash transfer schemes in Kenya that ‘just give money to the poor’ and currently include Tanzanian-led efforts to design digital technologies that aim to compensate for perceived inadequacies of medical expertise. I am also interested in how new technologies and mechanisms of assistance are considered capable of ‘leapfrogging’ historical developmental and infrastructural pathways, and how these seek to create new futures of expertise. 

My current research concerns the role of data science and healthcare technologies in Tanzania, which was previously part of the European Research Council funded project ‘Universal Health Coverage and the Public Good in Africa‘, led by Dr. Ruth Prince and based at the Institute of Health and Society.

My monograph, Caring Cash: Free Money and the Ethics of Solidarity in Kenya, concerning cash grants, care and ethics in Kenya, has been published by Pluto Press. I have also published peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social Anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly, Development and Change, Social Science and Medicine, and Global Policy.

Before my current role I was a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and before that lectured and taught in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. I received my PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, where I was a Honorary William Wyse Student.

I am a peer-reviewer for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Utafiti: Journal of African Perspectives, African Affairs, Social Science and Medicine, Global Policy, and Postcolonial Studies.

I speak Kiswahili and am currently trying, the best I can, to learn Norwegian!