Annie Wilkinson is an anthropologist and health systems researcher working with the Health and Nutrition, and Cities, clusters.

Annie conducts interdisciplinary, participatory and applied research on health in LMICs and has expertise in: zoonotic disease; epidemic preparedness and control; drug resistance; and urban health. She has worked extensively in West Africa, especially Sierra Leone, and within emergency humanitarian and epidemic response. Her recent research explores the governance of infection control in complex and rapidly changing health and socio-ecological systems. Annie holds an ESRC New Investigators Award exploring institutional arrangements around health and disease in informal urban settlements in Sierra Leone. She is interested in the knowledge and politics which influence how people understand, organise, make decisions and act to improve health or address infectious threats, and within that, to the promotion and application of social science in global health.

She co-founded the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform during the West African Ebola epidemic which provided rapid response advice and research into critical social and historical dimensions of the epidemic (and received the ESRC’s International Impact Prize in 2016). She was a member of the social science sub-group of the UK government’s SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies) for the West African Ebola epidemic. Building on these lessons, she co-leads the ‘Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform’, which mobilises social science networks and evidence for emergency preparedness and response.

Prior to joining IDS, Annie did her PhD at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex on the development and use of diagnostics for Lassa fever, and she holds an MSc in Health Services Research from the University of York. She has previously worked for the UK Medical Research Council, and the UCL Centre for Sexual Health and HIV research.