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School for Cross-faculty Studies Global Sustainable Development

Dr Marco J Haenssgen

Dr Marco J Haenssgen

Contact details
Email: marco.haenssgen@warwick.ac.uk
Tel.: Office ext. 23504
Room: R3.18, Ramphal Building

Term 3 office hours and comms policy:
Thu 12-1pm: MS Teams drop-in live text chat
Fri 12-1pm: MS Teams video call (by email appointment)

I normally try to respond to emails on the same day, but expect up to 3 working days (excl. weekends) for your queries to be processed. I don't regularly monitor MS Teams outside of the office hours above - please better contact me via email to avoid disappointment.

Teaching roles
GSD Project (Contributor)
Health and Sust. Dev't (Convenor)
Dissertation (Co-Convenor)
Administrative roles
SCFS Ethics Officer (GSD and LA Moodle spaces)
Research interests
Human behaviour | policy implementation | marginalisation | socio-technological change | global health | evaluation | public engagement
A map depicting the geographical research focus on East, South, and Southeast Asia
ORCID ORCID 0000-0002-5849-7131
ResearchGate ResearchGate Research Profile

Podcast Interview: On Social Science and Medicine
(by Christine Garrington for ESRC NCRM)

Podcast Interview: Socio-Medical Research
(by Centre for Tropical Medicine & Global Health)

WICID Methods Lab Podcast: Policy Analysis
(with Romain Chenet and Maria Gavris)

 

Recent blogs and commentary

Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research in Global Development

Antibiotics and Activity Spaces overview poster

Assistant Professor

Ethics Officer for the School for Cross-Faculty Studies
Associate Fellow, Warwick Institute of Advanced Study
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Affiliated Researcher, Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University

Biography

I am a social scientist by training, holding a DPhil in International Development (2015) and MPhil in Development Studies (2012) from the University of Oxford and a BSc in General Management from the European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel (2009; now EBS University of Business and Law). After my doctoral research on the social implications of mobile technology diffusion in rural India and China, I took on a position as Postdoctoral Scientist - Health Policy and Systems at the Centre of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford. I joined Warwick as Assistant Professor in Global Sustainable Development in January 2019. Outside of academia, I have worked as a development economist and consultant for German development agencies (DEG, KfW), and I have work experience in aid evaluation, management consulting, and intergovernmental policy making at the United Nations.

Research

I am a mixed-methods researcher in development studies, focusing geographically on Asia and thematically on human behaviour and policy implementation in contexts of marginalisation and societal change (e.g. technology diffusion). My research currently investigates the social context of antimicrobial resistance (a global health priority), exploring rural healthcare-seeking behaviours, how people understand antibiotics and illness, their constraints in accessing healthcare, and the intended and unintended consequences of health interventions. With my return from tropical medicine back to the field of global sustainable development, I am applying similar questions to other domains such as employment search and government service access. My recent research projects and initiatives include:

Pineapples in Thailand Activity Spaces and Household Exclusion from Food Environments (IMMANA Competitive Research Grant: £249,351, PI: C.S. Srinivasan): Study of physical and social food environments in Thailand and Lao PDR using innovative accelerometer data collection and conceptually based on activity space logic

Low-cost water purification at the household level in Kabul (Principal investigator, Royal Academy of Engineering, £15,730; co-PI with Daud Mohammad Hamidi): Pump-priming research into the uses and social development consequences of clay-based water filtration for urban Kabul communities.

Pottery. Credit: Marco J Haenssgen

Research in Champassak province, Lao PDR Learning space: education and its pathways to health belief and behaviours (EUTOPIA, Institute of Advanced Study, Institutional Research Support Fund, GRP Connecting Cultures: £157,200; co-PI with Thipphaphone Xayavong): Challenging the assumption that education automatically benefits health behaviour, focusing on rural livelihoods of local ethic groups

Exploring behavioural spill-overs in a nationwide agricultural insurance field experiment in Thailand (Principal investigator, Institute of Advanced Study and Warwick Interdisciplinary Centre for International Development, £4,100): Pump-priming research into linkages between agricultural insurance uptake and health-related behaviour in Thailand.

A rice field. Credit: Marco J Haenssgen

Chiang Mai Province, Thailand Dynamism of land use and livelihood strategies among highland ethnic minorities in Northern Thailand: Co-producing narratives of change (Principal investigator, GCRF Catalyst Fund, £19,793): Interdisciplinary study with Thai collaborators using innovative narrative co-production to study livelihood change and adaptation among marginalised groups.

What if precarity causes drug resistance? (Principal investigator, Global Research Priority on International Development & Institute of Advanced Study, £6,000): Leading interdisciplinary and international team to pump-prime research into the structural drivers of drug resistance

A capsule. Credit: Patthanan Thavethanutthanawin
A community fishery in Cambodia Protected Areas and People: Exploring perceived wisdoms surrounding natural resource management and sustainability (Social research lead, GCRF Catalyst Fund, £16,300, PI: Jessica Savage): Policy research to understand social consequences of marine protected areas in Cambodia.
Antibiotics and Activity Spaces: An Exploratory Study of Behaviour, Marginalisation, and Knowledge Diffusion (Principal investigator, ESRC, £237,633): Health behaviour and social network surveys with 5,885 villagers in rural Thailand and Lao PDR to understand the social context of antibiotic use. Drawnalism capture of Marco's research
Survey villages in mountainous areas of Chiang Rai, Thailand Supply-induced demand for antibiotics among marginalised populations in Northern Thailand (Principal investigator, University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division Internal Fund, £9,380): Mixed-method research on the evolution of antibiotic supply and demand.
GCRF Knowledge Exchange Dialogues: International Network for Socio-Medical Research, Public Engagement, and Evaluation (Convener, Oxford ESRC IAA, £7,399): A network of academic and non-academic collaborators to intensify intersectorial conversations. Workshop participants in Bangkok
Evaluation of antibiotic-themed theatre in Thailand Advancing Realist Evaluation Approaches for Public Engagement: Health-Themed Science Theatre in Thailand (Principal Investigator, Oxford University Public Engagement with Research Fund, £3,500): Innovative realist evaluation of public engagement with science
The impact of C-reactive protein testing on antibiotic prescription in febrile patients attending primary care in low-resource settings (Social research lead, Wellcome Trust, £98,750, PI: Yoel Lubell): Mixed-methods research on social context of biomarker tests to reduce antibiotic use in Thailand and Myanmar Drug card with common antibiotics used during interviews in Chiang Rai, Thailand
Word cloud of mhealth project descriptions Mobile technologies and health: a pilot study in India and China (Co-investigator, John Fell OUP Research Fund, PI: Proochista Ariana, £28,068): Mixed-methods research on the social implications of phone diffusion, esp. rural healthcare access
Exchange in International Development Across UK Doctoral Training Centres (Principal Investigator, Oxford ESRC DTC Interdisciplinary Project Grant, £1,300): An interdisciplinary network of UK international development students Interdisciplinary workshop participants

Teaching

At the Department for Global Sustainable Development, I am leading the second-year module on Health and Sustainable Development and the third-year Dissertation module (with Dr Gioia Panzarella), and I am contributing to the first-year Global Sustainable Development Project. Prior to joining Warwick, I taught on the graduate level at the University of Oxford, where I led or co-led modules on International Development and Health, Critical Engagement, and Health Policy and Systems Research in the MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine. I have also provided training on interdisciplinary research methods and survey research to graduate students across the social sciences, supervised MSc student theses (yielding a student publication in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene), and provided pastoral care as college advisor. My students awarded me twice with a junior teacher award in the MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine, and nominated me for university-wide teaching awards including the Warwick Award for Personal Tutoring Excellence 2021 and the 2018 University of Oxford Student Union Teaching Awards.

Engagement and impact

Tales of Treatment Poster

My research and teaching place strong emphasis on capacity building, non-academic engagement, and research impact. One example of impact is the uptake of the research in the international media (e.g. in the New Statesman, Chiang Rai Times, the Southeast Asia Globe, or on SciDevNet) and contributions to debates through research blogs and social media. As part of the public engagement with science, my research involved, for instance, bi-directional educational activities with villagers in Thailand and Laos - providing a platform for sharing ideas but also for the survey teams to learn from villagers. The same project also supported the team in cultivating their own ideas through internship opportunities to build local research capacity. This culminated in the international photo exhibition "Tales of Treatment," which we hosted at the Warwick Arts Centre, in Bangkok, Oxford, and Chiang Rai (Thailand) and which in itself has inspired new ideas around global health challenges that would have remained invisible without the team's enthusiastic work.

Publications

Monograph

Haenssgen, MJ (2020). Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research in Global Development: A Concise Guide. Bingley: Emerald. doi: 10.1108/9781839092299

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Data sets

Practitioner-oriented publications, commentary, and reviews