Fiona Samuels

Fiona is a social anthropologist with over 15 years experience crossing the fields of public health and rural development in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She currently focuses on the linkages between health and HIV and AIDS, poverty, risk and vulnerability with a particular interest on livelihoods, food security, migration, fragilities and access to services. She has also worked extensively on issues related to community engagement, empowerment, social capital and stigma and discrimination.

Over the past decade, Fiona has been working in the fields of both public health and rural development. She has worked for a variety of organisations including private sector, multi and bi-lateral and NGOs. Prior to joining ODI, Fiona was head of operations research at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, an NGO whose focus is on supporting community action in developing countries in order to help mitigate and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Seconded to the Alliance by the Population Council/Horizons project, Fiona managed a number of large-scale, multi-sited and multi-country operations research projects, which focused on issues around HIV/AIDS both within the general population and within different categories of people including health care providers, people living with HIV/AIDS, marginalized populations such as sex workers and men-who-have-sex-with men.

Fiona's experience has included: designing and implementing health and socio-economic surveys, using a variety of approaches and methods; developing, and training in, participatory approaches; facilitating community and participatory based planning, and monitoring and evaluation and carrying out programme and project evaluations and assessments. She has also carried out extended research for her doctoral thesis in rural and urban Zambia. Fiona has worked in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Her more recent in-depth research focus has been in Zambia and India.