About the authors

Dr. Gill Black is director and head of health participation at the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation (SLF). Gill has been facilitating community engagement in health and health science through participatory visual methods (PVM) since 2010. She has provided training in PVM for the Human Sciences Research Council in Cape Town and the Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape. Gill also supports the Ethox Centre at Oxford University with advice on public engagement and PVM. In her community engagement practice, Gill builds on 15 years of postdoctoral experience as a field based immunologist. The insights gained through her work as a medical scientist inspired her transition into community and public engagement and she has developed a specialist interest in facilitating reciprocal learning between scientists and community members. Gill has worked in several low and middle income countries (LMIC) including Kenya, Brazil, Malawi, Thailand and South Africa.

e-mail gill.black@livelihoods.org.za

SLF is an independent, non-profit research and engagement organization located in Cape Town and founded in 2010.

Dr. Mary Chambers is head of public and community engagement at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU), responsible for engagement teams in Vietnam, Nepal and Indonesia. Her practice over the last decade has involved using participatory methods to bring communities and biomedical researchers together. Mary has worked with a diverse range of communities in Southeast Asia including school children, healthcare workers, patients and their families and farmers. Mary has a research background in medical entomology and has lived and worked in Vietnam since 2000.

email mchambers@oucru.org

OUCRU is a biomedical research unit working across Southeast Asia to improve health outcomes related to infectious diseases. OUCRU is part of the Tropical Medicine Network, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and is one of the Wellcome Africa Asia Programme centres.

Dr. Alun Davies is the lead of a School Engagement with research Programme at the KEMRI-Wellcome-Trust Research programme in Kenya. The programme, established through a participatory action research approach, facilitates engagement interactions between researchers and students from over 50 schools across Kenya. Alun’s research, draws on qualitative, quantitative and participatory methods to explore community and public engagement with health research. Alun has over ten years’ experience of using and teaching participatory methods, including participatory video in Kenya, Vietnam and Thailand. Dr Davies contributed the guidelines on Participatory and Collective Film-making which can be found in Methods Module 2 of this course.  

email ADavies@kemri-wellcome.org

KEMRI is a national body responsible for carrying out health research in Kenya. KEMRI is part of the Tropical Medicine Network, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and is one of the Wellcome Africa Asia Programme centres.

Dr. Sonia Lewycka is senior epidemiologist at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Hanoi, Vietnam. The focus of her work is the use of community engagement as a platform for health behaviour change. She has used participatory action research methods to engage with women and communities, and mobilise action to improve maternal and child health in rural Malawi, and is currently developing a similar approach to engage with communities about appropriate antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance in Vietnam. Sonia has more than 15 years’ experience in the development and evaluation of complex public health interventions. Dr Lewycka contributed the guidelines on Picture Card Games which can be found in Methods Module 1 of this course. Dr Lewycka also provided the Ethics Case study on Degrees of Participation.

email slewycka@oucru.org