Dr Elizabeth Storer

Profile

I am a health geographer, working across a broad range of disciplines including geography, anthropology, development studies and public health. My research broadly explores forms of care which are not adequately valued by the state and international health actors. Research projects centre on 1) visibilising the health effects of state abandonment, and on the processes of care which emerge to ameliorate and protest historic and contemporary inequalities 2) the politics of defining particular health crises 3) the workings of interdisciplinary evidence and power in the production of health-policy, with particular focus on the ethics integrating communal responses to trauma and healing into policy.

My research seeks to learn from place-based vernaculars and renditions of care, and is grounded in ethnographic and participatory approaches. The focus of research typically emerges from periods of extended engagement with places, or from collaborations with health activists and associations working within them. I have been privileged to be hosted in the West Nile sub-region of Uganda for much of my research, as well as in Kenya, Italy and the UK. My research is fuelled by vibrant and active collaborations with anthropologists at SOAS and LSE, as well as researchers and practitioners within the NHS and diaspora care networks.

My research to date has explored the following themes:

Epidemic/ Pandemic Responses and Mistrust

My research has explored the deleterious effects of erasing structural discrimination within epidemic and pandemic responses. The geographic focus of this work has been on Ebola/ Covid-19 responses at state peripheries in East Africa and Europe, and I have particularly explored the violence policies hold for border-crossers in Uganda/ DRC and Italy/ France. Publications (in BMJ Global Health, Migration and Health, Medical Anthropology Quarterly) have centered upon understanding vaccination resistance, the intersection of policies with ‘borderwork’, as well as reflecting on the epistemic biases within health policy production. During Covid-19, as an active participant of the British Academy’s ‘Covid-19 Recovery in the G7 Forum’ my research contributed to UK discussions to shift ideas of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ towards an embrace of structural exclusion. As the UK coordinator of an EU Horizon project, PERISCOPE, I was involved in shaping the translation of ethnographic evidence to interdisciplinary EU fora.

Colonial Violence and Healing Cosmologies

My PhD research mapped social healing praxis in West Nile, Uganda. It explored how illness cosmologies among Lugbara-speaking communities in this border-region are linked to ongoing legacies of coloniality. This involved revisiting the present in view of the past, and exploring the multiple technologies of coloniality which interact with notions of illness – including writings produced by colonial anthropologists and theologians. It was highly commended by the Development Studies Association in 2022. Aspects of this research have been published in Political Geography, Transcultural Psychiatry, Third World Thematics and Medical Anthropology.

Unhealthy Homes

Current writing seeks to contribute to geographical literature which described homelessness and evictions as emblematic of neoliberal times. This has involved thinking through regional economies of eviction which span rural trading centres as well as Arua City in West Nile. It also involves collaborative research into the effects of financialising social housing provision in Birmingham.

Ethics of Participation

A running theme throughout my research has been an interest in the effect of depoliticising processes of participation, community and communal labour. I am interested in how participation can be instrumentalised in public health through ‘mutual aid’, as well as thinking through how research can perpetuate these risks. I am continually invested in finding better ways to do participation, and in developing teaching and engagement strategies to reflect on this.

My research to date has been funded by the British Academy, AHRC/ FCDO, ESRC, EU Horizon and LSE.

Teaching

I am an enthusiastic teacher of Geography. Inspired by the participatory praxis within my research, I endeavour to bring exciting and interactive methods to the classroom. I am passionate about bringing real work struggles and activism into conversation with geographical thinking, and encouraging students to learn from points of connection, as well as diversity, in global spaces.

In 2023-4, I will teach on the following modules:

Undergraduate

GEG4012-A23 – Academic Study Skills – 2023/24 (Semester 1) 

GEG4112-A23 – Global Worlds – 2023/24 (Semester 1)

GEG5135-B23 – Health, Space and Justice – 2023/24 (Semester 2) (convenor)

GEG5149-A23 – Boston Reworked: The Making of a North American City – 2023/24 (Semester 1)

GEG6099-A23 – Dissertation – 2023/24 (Full-Year)

Postgraduate

GEG7120-A23 – Geographical Thought and Practice – 2023/24 (Full-Year)

Research

Research Interests:

My research is currently divided across three projects:

The medicalisation of structural distress among Uganda’s diaspora community (EU Horizon, ESRC)

In the wake of colonial inequities, many people within the UK Ugandan diaspora are connected to a network of grassroots health associations, which facilitate care at the transnational level, as well as in London. Working with two of these organisations – the Uganda-UK Health Alliance and the Ugandan Diaspora Foundation - this project explores changing circulation of health knowledge and activism both transnationally and locally. It asks how global mental health discourses are reworked across networks of care. The project is particularly invested in charting how ideas of depression and anxiety are being evoked to incorporate structural distress relating to housing, asylum, as well as diasporic obligations. This is an unfolding collaborative project with Moses Mulimira (Uganda Diaspora Foundation), Charlotte Hawkins (LSE), and Innocent Anguyo (LSE). We are currently generating participatory data through research grounded in the space of Newham, but encompassing wider diasporic perspectives from health professionals across London and in Uganda.

Housing Trauma in Birmingham (SOAS, LSE)

This collaborative research with Nikita Simpson (SOAS), Suad Duale (NHS) and Ella Hubbard (NHS), explores the traumatic effects of familial homelessness and housing insecurity in Birmingham. We understand the housing ‘crisis’ to be a key lever which drives health inequalities in the city, and are invested in tracing inductively the multiple axis of suffering which people ascribe to housing. The backdrop to the research is the intersection of financialised social housing policies, entrenched austerity, mediate the particular postcolonial geography of Birmingham, which renders extreme forms of dispossession among the Somali community who are participants in this work. Research based on participatory workshops, testimonies and archives since 2022, has mapped how ‘homes’ can become carceral spaces, bringing their occupants into harmful relations with mould. We are currently drafting manuscripts related to this research, as well as being involved in impact work in Birmingham.

Eco-social violence in WN Uganda (ESRC, British Academy)

This project emerges from longstanding research in West Nile (2015-present), spanning from my doctoral research to subsequent collaborative research projects. It will culminate in a book which will broadly focus on a reading of the ‘slow violence’ of coloniality and abandonment which is entangled in eco-social cosmologies in the region. The approach focuses on anxieties which circulate around changing flows of real and imagined communities, (including food, herbs, poisons and spirits).  I am also involved in ongoing research led by Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and the Makerere School of Public Health, which explores the multiple notions of distance which function during health emergencies in Arua and Kampala, Uganda.

I am also involved in ongoing research with former colleagues at LSE to better understand the workings of the Early-Career Researcher category in UK academia. I have previously led research projects funded by the British Academy (Ethnographies of Disengagement: Understanding Vaccine Rejection in Chronically Neglected Communities across the G7) and LSE (Trust in Crisis) as PI, and have led workstreams on research projects funded by AHRC/ FCDO (Safety of Strangers) and the British Academy (Living the Everyday: Healthseeking at Uganda’s Margins). I am also a Visiting Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.

Publications

• Storer and Torre (2023) ‘Vaccine populism’ and migrant assistance: On the contingency of mutual aid in Italy's Alpine region, Global Policy.
• Torre and Storer (2023) COVID-19 vaccines, mobility, and pandemic bureaucracies: Undocumented migrants’ perspectives from Italy's Alpine border, Migration and Health.
• Storer and Anguyo (2023) “These people are lying to us”: Mutating Vaccine Fears and Colonial Histories in Arua, North-West Uganda, Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
• Storer and Torre (2023), “All in Good Faith?” An ethno-historical analysis of Local Faith Actors’ involvement in the delivery of mental health interventions in Northern Uganda, Transcultural Psychiatry.
• Storer et al (2022) COVID-19 Vaccination Campaigns and the Production of Mistrust: Evidence from Roma and Migrant Populations in Italy, BMJ Global Health.
• Storer, Dawson and Fergus (2022) COVID-19 Riskscapes: Viral risk perceptions in the African Great Lakes Region, Medical Anthropology.
• Storer and Simpson (2022) An Elusive Animal: Thinking about trust in an uncertain present, Critical Care, Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
• Storer, Anguyo and Odda (2022) “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”: Marungi and Realities of Resilience in North West Uganda, Civil Wars.
• Leonardi, Storer and Fisher (2021) Geographies of Unease: Witchcraft, Mobility and Insecurity in an African Borderland, Political Geography.
• Kirk, Storer et al (2021) Crisis responses, opportunity and public authority during Covid-19's first wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, Disasters.
• Fergus, Storer and Adriko (2021) COVID-19 Information Dissemination in Uganda: Perspectives from subnational health workers BMC Health Services Research.
• Storer, (2021) “Lugbara “Religion” Revisited: A Study of Social Repair in West Nile, North-West Uganda, LSE Theses Online.
• Storer, O’Byrne & Reid (2017) Poisoning at the periphery: allocating responsibility across the Uganda/South Sudan borderlands, Third World Thematics.

Public Engagement

I consider impact as an integral aspect of the research process, and build in appropriate mediums of engagement to all aspects of projects (generating research questions, methodologies, as well as in the form of outputs).

I have authored numerous reports for stakeholders working in health and social care.  With Dr Iliana Sarafian, I co-authored a 2022 report for the British Academy (Principles of Building Trust: Engaging Disenfranchised Communities across the G7 in COVID-19 vaccine campaigns), and with Cristin Fergus, a 2021 report for the Ugandan Ministry of Health. I regularly translate aspects of my research to policy briefings which are often published on the Social Science and Humanitarian Action Platform, (examples on urban health in Kampala and Ebola prevention). I am committed to ethically and appropriately engaging ethnographic perspectives in multi-disciplinary policy fora. I have presented research on Covid-19 to members of the British Academy SHAPE Network, at the European Meeting of the Royal Society, the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration, as well as to the British Ambassador in Rome.

I have also curated virtual and physical spaces for scholars to have open interdisciplinary discussions, as well as to refine thinking around key concepts in public health (particularly around trust). In 2022, with colleagues at LSE, I led the development of a training module which focused on integrating ethnographic methods into vaccine policy, as well as a short video which summarised this approach.

I am committed to collaboratively writing with colleagues, and to publish in format which are relevant, accessible and exciting for the interlocutors within my research. This has led to the co-authorship of a series of working papers on epidemic responses in West Nile, which highlighted hidden aspects of survival in communities and hospitals. I have also edited multiple blog series on Covid-19, and published in African Arguments.

In 2018, I collaborated with a photographer, Katie Nelson, and a curator, Kara Blackmore to collate a virtual exhibition ‘Enduring Exile’, which presented a visual narrative to explore South Sudanese displacement into Arua Town. This was exhibited as part of a dialogue at the National Museum of Uganda 2017.