We are delighted to announce the successful award from the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID). The WICID Seed Funding Scheme aims to connect researchers and support funding bids for cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and global south research.

The funding will be awarded for the project ‘National Ethics Committees facing public health emergencies: a comparative analysis of the cases of Benin, Italy and Great Britain in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic’ led by Dr Davide Piaggio and Dr Alessia Maccaro.

The project will compare the existing National Ethical Committees among Italy, Benin and the UK to pinpoint possible differences, biases and gaps to be addressed in order to promote better aligned practices via a framework aimed at facilitating the contextual evaluation of pressing ethical issues during health emergencies. This is an interdisciplinary project consisting of researchers from different fields of expertise such as sociology, anthropology, policy, bioethics and biomedical engineering in order to promote the bridging among subjects. It also aims to strengthen the inter-university collaboration between the University of Warwick (UK), the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) and the University of Naples Federico II (Italy).