Graduate student Crystal Lynn Biruk, supervised by Dr. Sandra T. Barnes, will undertake research on the social science of expert knowledge generation cross-culturally through a case study of how different constructions of risk are produced, communicated and negotiated during the conduct of four collaborative AIDS research projects in Malawi. The overarching hypothesis is that authoritative knowledge about AIDS risk emerges out of the social interactions among international investigators, Malawian investigators, and the Malawian intermediaries who implement the projects in the field, and that this authoritative knowledge is then further reinterpreted in the villages. The researcher will use multiple social science research methods to collect qualitative data, including archival research, documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation among actors involved in collaborative AIDS research.
Donors and national governments increasingly require that AIDS research in sub-Saharan Africa be collaborative. They treat collaborative work as unproblematic, while, in contrast, the theoretical social science literatures claim that collaboration across social and cultural boundaries is likely to be fraught with tensions. Collaborative research is undertaken to provide evidence that informs HIV prevention policies and programs. Therefore, it is important to understand how different research collaborators initially conceptualize the risk they aim to study, and how diversity in these conceptualizations is or is not resolved as the research progresses.
This research is important because it will contribute to social science theory about the relationship between global and local agency in the arena of expert knowledge, and to the field of the social science of knowledge more generally. It also may help to develop better strategies for scientific research collaborations between people of different cultures. In addition, the research will support the education of a social scientist.
