Last week, the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Marsh Charitable Trust announced that Juliet Bedford, a Co-Investigator (Co-I) of the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) and Director of Anthrologica, is the 2022 winner of the Marsh Award for Anthropology in the World.

 

As the Marsh Charitable Trust explains, the award recognises an outstanding individual based outside academia who has applied anthropology or anthropological ideas in order to have a positive influence on, or help us better understand, the problems facing our world today. Nominations are judged by the Royal Anthropological Institute Honours and Awards committee and the winner is presented with their Award at the Royal Anthropological Institute annual AGM.

 

Acknowledging Juliet’s contribution to integrating social science perspectives into humanitarian and health responses to the Ebola and the Zika virus, her achievements are highlighted by the Award:

“Juliet has given her efforts to bring anthropological approaches to the task of strengthening the capability to impede public health emergencies in resource-constrained settings. Juliet was the first anthropologist to be formally employed by the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response to West Africa in 2014. Her job involved integrating learning from anthropology and other social sciences into response strategies, hoping to make them more effective in halting the transmission of the virus, promoting early detection and reporting of symptoms and encouraging early care and treatment. Juliet has gone on to coordinate anthropological and other social science support during the response to the Zika virus and lead the response to recent Ebola breakouts. She currently contributes to the World Health Organisation’s Health Emergency Programme and also provides strategic advice to the Centre of International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. Juliet’s work has helped to build a strong evidence base for community-based approaches to combat humanitarian crises. She consistently, and effectively, demonstrates that interventions will only be effective when they are relevant, contextually appropriate, and co-owned by affected and at-risk populations, and when two-way trust is obtained.”

 

Our work at SSHAP on such crises is ongoing, and we have a series of upcoming publications on the latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

To find out more about the award and previous winners, view the announcement on the Marsh Charitable Trust website.