About
Josh Parker Allen is a Research Officer at FLIA and the British Institute in Eastern Africa. A Medical Anthropologist and Development Studies scholar, he is broadly interested in the politics of global health and development. His ethnographic work focuses primarily on Uganda, though he has also conducted research in Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria. He is currently revising a monograph entitled "Separating Science: Distance, Data, and Disparity in Ugandan Global Health" that illustrates how the knowledge produced by global health research in Uganda is shaped by cultural, epistemic, and political-economic forces in ways that reproduce the very inequalities that the field (cl)aims to reduce.
Josh's current research interests centre on the impacts on public health and the state of the withdrawal of donor funding for global health and development. He previously conducted research on health systems and integrated respiratory care in Lagos, Arusha, and Nairobi at Imperial College London. His work has been published in Medicine Anthropology Theory, Economy & Society, and The Lancet.
Selected Publications:
- ‘Sticky knowledge’: The political economy of global health science in Uganda. Economy and Society. 2026
- Decentralisation must be the future of global health (with Stephen Asiimwe). The Lancet. 2026
- ‘The Donors are Everything’: Precarity and the Political Economy of Global Health Science. Medicine Anthropology Theory. 2025