Dr Isabelle Uny

I am a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Marketing and Health (ISMH) at the University of Stirling. I am a social scientist and qualitative researcher with a PhD in Global Health and Development from Queen Margaret University (UK), which explored options for delivery care of the most out of reach pregnant women in Malawi following the ban of traditional birth attendants (https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/7469). I have been working with and learning from colleagues in Malawi for 15 years. I have significant experience of developing and conducting research in the Global South (particularly in Southern Africa). My current work focuses on household air pollution, and I lead an innovative project with an interdisciplinary team in Kenya and Malawi exploring perceptions of community members in informal settlements who cook/ heat using solid fuels ( e.g. charcoal, wood). The project is funded by the AHRC( From Fuel to Pot: an interdisciplinary partnership to address the role of solid fuel use in food preparation in the household in Kenya and Malawi) and a collaboration between the University of Stirling, Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, and the Kenya Medical Research Institute . I am also a partner on the Clean the Air Better Indoors for Newborns (CABIN) network ( @CABIN_HAP), with a number of African partners, including from Malawi . I am awaiting UKRI funding news on another Malawi research Project called: RAPSSA- Regulating alcohol packaging and supply to protect health in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from policy systems in Malawi and Uganda, in collaboration with Chancellor College University of Malawi and Makerere University (Uganda).
I have significant expertise in the use of qualitative methods and in qualitative analysis as well as in qualitative evidence synthesis (particularly meta-ethnography), process evaluation and intervention development in an LMIC context. I have a growing interest in new forms of data visualisation and in participatory methods (e.g. photovoice, walking interviews, participatory methods and other methods of communication which are art-based and inspired from theatre for development). Prior to working in Academia, I worked for over a decade for various international development organisations in the UK, including as a programmes officer for the UK National Commission for UNESCO.

The Safe Roads Africa project in Malawi is focusing on buidling an equal partnership which is together designing a programme intervention to improve community prevention and first-response to road traffic collisions and the trauma resulting from those.