Congratulations to our alumna Dr Juliet Bedford on winning the Marsh Award for Anthropology in the World 2022, an award run by the Marsh Charitable Trust in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Juliet has given her efforts to bring anthropological approaches to the task of strengthening the capability to impede public health emergencies in resource-constrained settings. Juliet was the first anthropologist to be formally employed by the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response to West Africa in 2014. Her job involved integrating learning from anthropology and other social sciences into response strategies, hoping to make them more effective in halting the transmission of the virus, promoting early detection and reporting of symptoms and encouraging early care and treatment. Juliet has gone on to coordinate anthropological and other social science support during the response to the Zika virus and lead the response to recent Ebola breakouts. She currently contributes to the World Health Organisation’s Health Emergency Programme and also provides strategic advice to the Centre of International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. Juliet’s work has helped to build a strong evidence base for community-based approaches to combat humanitarian crises. She consistently, and effectively, demonstrates that interventions will only be effective when they are relevant, contextually appropriate, and co-owned by affected and at-risk populations, and when two-way trust is obtained.
More information can be found on the Marsh Charitable Trust website.
