North-South Power Differentials and Competition in the Research Business Collaborative research is committed to a division of labour. To summarise, two different blocks emerge from the power relationships that characterise the production of knowledge. The first block includes (i) the “donor” who provides the research funding and determines the conditions on how to get access […]
Remunerating Researchers from the Global South: A Source of Academic Prostitution? While researchers from the Global North are granted a guaranteed salary, risk funds, and various forms of insurance, the same cannot be said for research assistants. The remunerative discrepancy between these two groups is a form of discrimination. It creates an imbalance between researchers […]
In a conversation with a friend (a well qualified epidemiologist, who trained at one of the top institutions in the world and is currently based at an institution in Africa), he acknowledged the power imbalances present in global health, describing his position of local research coordinator as a so-called glorified data collector. Through a deep […]
ABSTRACT Drawing on the reflections and discussions from a special session at the 2021 Global Health Bioethics Network summer school, this paper has summarised the key challenges faced by Frontline Workers (FWs) across research sites in Africa and Asia in performing the everyday ‘body work’ entailed in operationalising global health research. Using a ‘body work’ […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on existing systemic inequities, both in terms of health inequity and broader socio-economic inequities.1 There have been calls globally not just to build back better but to do so in a way that dismantles structural inequities. Abimbola et al have outlined facets of supremacy, encompassing coloniality, patriarchy, racism, white supremacy and saviourism, […]
To say that we live in turbulent times is a massive understatement. COVID-19 ruthlessly exposes the fault lines of health services and systems, and the responses put in place to prevent its spread or mitigate its effects may affect people more than the actual infection. The outbreak in Wuhan quickly grew to a pandemic that […]
Health research in low-resource settings often involves individuals and populations defined as ‘vulnerable’. There is growing attention in the literature to the ethical dilemmas that frontline research staff face while conducting such research. However, there is little documented as to how research staff might support one another in identifying and handling these dilemmas in different […]
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and Women in Global Health movements, and ongoing calls to decolonise global health have all created space for uncomfortable but important conversations that reveal serious asymmetries of power and privilege that permeate all aspects of global health.In this article, we, a diverse, gender-balanced group of […]
There are contrasting opinions of what global health (GH) curricula should contain and limited discussion on whose voices should shape it. In GH education, those with first-hand expertise of living and working in the contexts discussed in GH classrooms are often absent when designing curricula. To address this, we developed a new model of curriculum […]
Global health research should generate new knowledge to improve the health and well-being of those considered disadvantaged and marginalised. This goal motivates much of the global health research being undertaken today. Yet simply funding and conducting global health research will not necessarily generate the knowledge needed to help reduce health disparities between and within countries. […]