Salla Sariola
Senior Researcher in Global Health Ethics
Salla Sariola is a senior research fellow at the Global Health Bioethics Network funded by the Wellcome Trust’s Strategic Award (096527). My long term research interests concern organisation and conduct of clinical research in developing country settings and emerging economies. The Global Health Bioethics Network involves six research units in South Africa, Kenya, Malawi, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK.
Prior to joining ETHOX, I worked at the Anthropology Department in Durham on a project entitled Biomedical and Health Experimentation in South Asia (BHESA) with 14 researchers in Universities of Durham, Edinburgh, Colombo (Sri Lanka), Social Science Baha (Nepal) and Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights in India. This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development joint funding scheme on poverty alleviation. Writing up from this project is on-going - I am currently working on papers on gender and experimentation; CROs and innovation; politics and use of evidence in health policy; and emerging research cultures in South Asia.
The BHESA project grew out of a large Anthropology project across Cambridge, Durham and Sussex Universities on International Bioethics and Science Collaboration in Asia funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. My research in the ISBC project concerned clinical trials in Sri Lanka. The main publications from the material are below and I’m working on my second monograph on this.
My research interests also include gender, sexuality and marginality. I published my PhD as a monograph: Gender and Sexuality in India: selling sex in Chennai (2010 and 2012 by Routledge). Using feminist and queer theory frameworks, this book is an ethnography of sex workers in Tamil Nadu, south India. It analyses sex workers’ experiences in relation to global health policies regarding HIV, identity and agency, and asks in what ways marginalised women and men are able to negotiate the violence that they come across in their everyday lives. I have also written about gender and drug use following my experiences of working in women’s drug rehabs before moving to academia.
My research interests include: Science and Technology Studies, Medical Anthropology, South Asian Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Global Health, and Bioethics
Recent publications
-
Big-pharmaceuticalisation: clinical trials and Contract Research Organisations in India.
Journal article
Sariola S. et al, (2015), Soc Sci Med, 131, 239 - 246
-
'Facing our Fears': Facilitated Film Viewings as a Community Engagement Tool in Research Involving MSM in Kenya.
Journal article
Gichuru E. et al, (2014), AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses, 30 Suppl 1, A132 - A133
-
Precarious ethics: Toxicology research among self-poisoning hospital admissions in Sri Lanka
Journal article
Sariola S. and Simpson B., (2013), BioSocieties, 8, 41 - 57
-
Blinding Authority: Randomized Clinical Trials and the Production of Global Scientific Knowledge in Contemporary Sri Lanka
Journal article
Simpson B. and Sariola S., (2012), Science Technology and Human Values, 37, 555 - 575
-
Theorising the 'human subject' in biomedical research: international clinical trials and bioethics discourses in contemporary Sri Lanka.
Journal article
Sariola S. and Simpson B., (2011), Soc Sci Med, 73, 515 - 521