Shifting States of Science in Eastern Africa

This project, now completed, was pursued by Wenzel Geissler together with colleagues in Kenya and London and was anchored in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu. One part of it, more historical in orientation, focused on a section of the Kenyan Ministry of Health, the Division of Vector Borne Dis-eases (i.e. diseases transmitted by vectors like malaria, dengue-fever, etc., DVBD), which was the main medical research body in the area between the 1940s and the 1980s. Wenzel Geissler collected archival materials about the DVBD’s work – with a specific interest in medical research fieldwork and interactions with study subjects and other local residents, as well as the role of British and Kenyan scientists – and interviewed former and present DVBD staff, with the aim of gaining insights into past scientific practices and ethos, as well as the present state of the organisation and its staff.

The second part of the project, more ethnographic in orientation, was a study of HIV research conducted by the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRRI), which, since the 1980s, has emerged as the leading institution for transnational medical research in Kenya – replacing the DVBD and taking on some of its staff – and in particular its long-term collaboration with the US federal agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is running one of the largest medical research sites in Africa near the city of Kisumu. This fieldwork, extending over three years, was centred around one four-year clinical trial of HIV prevention, conducting ethnographic fieldwork on all levels of the trial, gathering material and documentary evidence, as well as interviews with research staff, scientists, medical practitioners, research subjects, their relatives, and many others who were in some way involved in medical research projects in the area. The main publications (in the appendix) focussed both on scientific practices and the lives of those engaged in them, and on the production and dissemination of research findings. The studies also resulted in several follow-on projects, including a collaborative study on Street Level Health Workers: producing public health in the African city (funded by the Wellcome Trust), and a larger research project on Memorials and Remains of Medical Research in Africa (funded by ESRC), conducted jointly with colleagues from London, Amsterdam, and Paris.

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