Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)

PO Box 230

Kilifi

80108 Kenya

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.