Dr Dorcas Kamuya
Contact information
Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)
PO Box 230
Kilifi
80108 Kenya
Dorcas Kamuya
BSc, MSc, PhD
Researcher in Ethics and Community Engagement
Dorcas is Researcher in Ethics and Community Engagement on the Global Bioethics Network. Her role includes: facilitating the strategic development of community engagement activities at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Unit in Kilifi, Kenya; coordinating Global Bioethics Network activities aimed at encouraging the sharing of expertise in community engagement between the Wellcome Trust Major Overseas Programmes (MOPs) in Kenya, Thailand, Malawi, Vietnam, and South Africa; and developing and leading a research programme around the development and evaluation of methods of community engagement.
Before joining the Ethox Centre, Dorcas was employed at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), Kilifi, Kenya. Her roles, as the Community Liaison Manager included setting-up mechanisms for engaging with over 260,000 residents often involved in health research, strengthening collaborative partnerships between KWTRP and key health stakeholders, providing support to research interface staff (especially fieldworkers), and carrying our action research around these activities. Together with her colleagues at the Health Systems Research Department (HSR) at KEMRI-WT, they have published papers on their experiences around ethics of conducting in developing countries.
Dorcas has a PhD from the Open University, UK; a Masters in Public Health (health promotion) from London School of Hygiene and Tropical and a BSc. in Agricultural Economics from Egerton University, Kenya. Her PhD, titled “Negotiating research participation in community-based studies: Fieldworkers’ roles, and implications for ethical practice”, drew on social science methodologies to explore the practical and ethical challenges fieldworkers at the interface of research implementation faced, and the systems they drew on to resolve and/or negotiate out of these challenges. Her research interests include ethical implications of community engagement processes in international collaborative research in developing countries; exploration of drivers of CE in health research, and of different models; ethical and practical challenges and dilemmas for research staff at the interface of research implementation.
Recent publications
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Enhancing fieldworkers' performance management support in health research: an exploratory study on the views of field managers and fieldworkers from major research centres in Africa.
Journal article
Kombe FK. et al, (2019), BMJ Open, 9
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Controlled Human Malaria Infection in Semi-Immune Kenyan Adults (CHMI-SIKA): a study protocol to investigate in vivo Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite growth in the context of pre-existing immunity
Journal article
Kapulu M. et al, (2019)
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The NeuroDev Study: Phenotypic and Genetic Characterization of Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Kenya and South Africa.
Journal article
de Menil V. et al, (2019), Neuron, 101, 15 - 19
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Evolution of a programme to engage school students with health research and science in Kenya.
Journal article
Davies A. et al, (2019), Wellcome Open Res, 4
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Ethical considerations in Controlled Human Malaria Infection studies in low resource settings: Experiences and perceptions of study participants in a malaria Challenge study in Kenya
Journal article
Njue M. et al, (2018)