Frances Hill
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

Frances is a part-time PhD student focusing on malaria within refugee and internally displaced populations as a result of conflict and natural disasters and the disease’s relationship with other infectious diseases such as HIV AIDS. She has over 25 years working in the international development and humanitarian sectors with NGOs, academics, policy makers and the private sector on a wide range of topics that have mainly been involved with under-represented communities such as older people, people with disabilities and local organisations.

Qualifications

• MSc Development Studies, University of Bath 1992-93. Dissertation: ‘The Political Economy of Malaria’
• BA (Hons) Archaeology, University of Durham 1980-83
• Level Two Accredited Partnership Broker, The Partnering Initiative 2014

Research

Overview

Frances' research is framed within the malaria eradication discourse, with a focus on mobile populations that form part of the ‘last mile’ when it comes to eliminating malaria in a country or region. She is particularly interested in investigating the policies and tools used nationally and those recommended internationally to see if they are fit for purpose with the unprecedented number of people on the move and the rise in displacement from natural disasters and conflict. Of particular interest is that these mobile populations are perceived as a major risk in terms of spreading disease to naively immune populations, but some of the policies and funding foci in place are perhaps exacerbating this and actually represent a risk to all populations – not just those on the move. She feels that this is particularly important in the case of eliminating countries that have borders with highly endemic countries where imported malaria is measured but not included when classifying a country as eliminating, and where there is a fracture between the WHO classification of areas, such as ENRO and Asia. e.g. Tajikistan (ENRO) and Afghanistan (ASIA).

Projects

• PhD project: 'What are the implications of asymptomatic reservoirs in migrating populations from, to and within sub-Saharan-Africa for a “Malaria Free World”?'
• Supervised by: Amanda Mason-Jones

Research group(s)

• Public Health and Society

Publications

Selected publications

• Hill, F. (1999). Finland In I. Smillie & H. Helmich (Eds.), Stakeholders: Government-NGO partnerships for International Development (pp. 94-102). London: Earthscan (Routledge).

External activities

Memberships

• Development Studies Association
• Chair of Trustees, South West International Development Network
• Royal African Society
• Works at Elrha as Effective Partnership Manager, linking research, innovation and practice within the humanitarian sector

Invited talks and conferences

• MPH Infectious Diseases module – delivered the session on malaria, November 2016
• Asian Disaster Reduction and Response Network Regional Innovation Forum, Bangkok, December 2016