Luisa Enria

Luisa Enria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she applies political anthropology approaches to studying community experiences of epidemic preparedness and response. She currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for her project "Crisis of Confidence: the Politics of Evidence and (Mis)Trust in Epidemic Preparedness and Response" and is affiliated with both the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre and Vaccine Centre.

Dr. Enria completed her DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford in 2015, where her thesis explored the relationship between unemployment and political violence in post-war Sierra Leone. Prior to joining LSHTM in 2020, she was a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath (2016-2020), where she also held an ESRC Fellowship for her project 'States of Emergency: Citizenship in Crisis in Sierra Leone'. From 2015-16, she worked as a Research Fellow at LSHTM based in Kambia, Northern Sierra Leone, conducting ethnographic research on community experiences of the Ebola outbreak.

Her research focuses on the politics of emergencies and emergency response, including youth political mobilization in post-conflict reconstruction, communities' engagement with biomedical research, the effects of epidemics on re-ordering state-society relations, and the socio-political dynamics underpinning vaccination campaigns in humanitarian settings. Her work bridges anthropology, political science, and public health, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration in crisis contexts.

Dr. Enria's recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on trust dynamics during health emergencies, vaccine hesitancy, community resilience, and the political dimensions of epidemic response across multiple contexts including Sierra Leone, DRC, Uganda, Tanzania, and Palestine. Her research increasingly examines how digital platforms shape information flows and trust during health crises.

• UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for "Crisis of Confidence" project
• ESRC Fellowship for "States of Emergency" project

Dr. Enria leads multiple significant research projects including Crisis of Confidence (MRC-funded), PULSE (real-time evaluation of community engagement for vaccination in humanitarian settings), and EBOVAC (supporting social science research for Ebola vaccine trials in Sierra Leone). She has secured funding from diverse sources including MRC, UKRI, ESRC, and humanitarian organizations. She is also actively involved in training Community Health Workers in social science methods to conduct research on vaccine hesitancy and pandemic response in Sierra Leone. Her work emphasizes community-led research approaches and knowledge co-production with crisis-affected populations.

Based at LSHTM, Dr. Enria collaborates with researchers across the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre and Vaccine Centre, working with interdisciplinary teams that include epidemiologists, clinicians, social scientists, and public health practitioners. Her fieldwork is primarily conducted in Sierra Leone but extends to multiple African countries and Palestine, focusing on how local communities navigate and reshape global health interventions during emergencies.