Title: The Promise of Science: Deliberating on biomedicine, health and democracy in the Ugandan parliament
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The proposed research explores science and democracy through the lens of scientific capacity building in Uganda. While scientific capacity building is often cast as a common good, its practices and implementation at the level of local institutions are little understood, and yet it broaches concerns about the globalisation of science and health governance, the spatialisation of development practices, and the relationship between liberal democracy and scientific knowledge. These concerns are contrasted against urgent calls to secure the health needs of poorer populations, and through international research networks, advance knowledge and understanding of major health issues affecting world populations, such as how to mitigate the health effects of environmental change, how to cope with growing populations, and how to contain infectious diseases. The research focusses on the practices and perspectives of parliamentarians, parliamentary staff and researchers, donor agencies and research organisations in incorporating biomedical and health-related knowledge into parliamentary business. Drawing on text-based analysis of documents, in-depth semi-structured interviews and observational fieldwork of committee meetings, the study builds up a case study of science and health governance in the global south. The project examines the processes that bring scientific capacity into being, asking how 'capacity' is imagined by the different actors involved. By this means, it explores how knowledge production is translated into political communication and action, and how trajectories of health, biomedicine and democratisation converge in a legislative arena. Political institutions are increasingly required to deliberate on issues that carry significant technical and scientific content. Parliaments emerge as important institutions that reassert the role of the state in development policy and carry the torch of democracy. Parliaments have the potential to bring together different sectors of society - experts, civil society, business, policymakers and donors - to develop informed, equitable and sustainable forms of governance. However, in a country such as Uganda, questions have been raised about the capacities of parliament to deliberate on complex issues as well as its actual power in scrutinising government. This is where scientific capacity building gains its impetus. While the rationale to intervene in African parliaments appears legitimate, practitioners of capacity building programmes struggle to reflect on the assumptions underpinning their work, in particular the relationship between knowledge and power; and local researchers are often not equipped with the skills and knowledge to do critical work at the science/society border that interrogates the effectiveness of donor programmes, and works to improve them in context. This project aims to develop an impact agenda that addresses these gaps, and by doing so, capacity builds itself. The project aims to translate the research into the policymaking and practices of Ugandan (which include research participants, social scientists, scientists and researchers, donor and civil society organisations) and UK-based users (which include think tanks on development and science, donor agencies, and social scientists working in similar areas based at QMUL and other universities). Communicating with users will be accomplished through a structured dissemination path that involves publishing 2 journal articles and one single authored monograph, presenting at conferences, and attending seminars and reading groups. In addition, non-academic users in the UK and Uganda will be invited to participate in a series of four knowledge exchange events, in which they will be introduced and asked to engage in research design and data analysis. The research will be supported by a webpage and regular briefings will be sent to users, updating them on its progress at specific stages.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE