My interdisciplinary research is driven by policy concerns and draws on diverse research approaches as needed. I use theoretical insights from anthropology (fieldwork methodology), sociology and political theory (analysis of the institutionalization of norms and rules within specific power dynamics as well as analysis on questions of justice and injustice experienced due to policies). My intellectual agenda developed by critically examining how different ways of knowing warrant both claims to knowledge (what can be known) and claims to the authority to act (policy); and how this knowledge and assumed authority to act are then used (implementation). In this way, I critically link theoretical work with detailed qualitative research in specific policy areas. I focus on whether and how people’s everyday experience-based knowledge intersects with and informs the policies that target them, as well as the extent to which policy actors are self- aware as to their knowledge claims and the implications of these for targeted groups. Throughout my work, starting with my PhD, I have developed and used a context-analytical approach that is sensitive to people’s everyday experience.
More thematically I work: on HIV and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa considering the development, implementation and implications of international AIDS policies; on nature of knowledge and evidence used by global policy actors; on contextual determinants of policy relevant knowledge; on sexualities and LGBT activism in different contexts; and theories and politics of civil society. I am also exploring the relationship between social/public policies and violence and conflict and study experiences of injustice and how such experiences are either addressed or not, even after the conflict and violence that were experienced. My work provides an epistemological shift in thinking about policy processes and their outcomes from the perspective of people’s experiences. This approach aims to valorise experience based knowledge as part of our assessments of needs, policies and policy implementations.
I was the editor in Chief of Journal of Civil Society.