Runa Lazzarino

I am a socio-cultural and medical anthropologist by training. I have been conducting research in the fields of migration and health since 2008. I have been involved in research projects on vulnerable migrants' and refugees' mental health, cultural competence in nursing care, socially assistive robots and other advanced technology in healthcare, and spiritual care needs during major health disasters. 

Currently, I am involved in a qualitative stream of a larger study aiming at understanding and improving the use of digital sepsis alerts across a number of NHS Trusts in England. Sepsis is a common cause of serious illness and death worldwide. The need for rapid treatment has led to the development of clinical criteria and digitalised ‘screening tools’ have been introduced in high-resources settings to identify patients with sepsis. Little is however known about the 'human factor' as well as other barriers/enablers in the use of this technology. DiAlS Qual study starts addressing these gaps in evidence.

I obtained my Ph.D. with a multi-stakeholder and multi-country ethnography concentrating on post-trafficking recovery and humanitarian assistance. I subsequently held post-doc posts at UCL, the University of Nottingham, and Middlesex University 

Together with investigating advanced technologies in healthcare, my research interests include global (mental) health; socio-cultural/gender norms, discourses and structural determinants of health(care); creative expressions as means of research and healing. Methodologically, interest is in participatory, interdisciplinary, creative projects, and multimodal ethnography, within the framework of policy-oriented and impactful research. Theoretically, my viewpoint is attentive to power/agency, subjectivity, intersectionality, post-colonialism and feminism, and epistemology in medical anthropology and social theory. Regional expertise: Southeast Asia (Northern Vietnam), Lusophone South America (Central West Brazil), South Asia (Nepal and Northern India), the UK. 

Large projects, innovatively and participatory tackling global challenges - which are bio-chemicals, human behavioural, environmental and political altogether - are an ideal context where I intend to further develop professionally.