Dr Dalia Iskander

Academic position: Lecturer (Teaching) in Medical Anthropology

Department: Anthropology

Biography:

Dr Iskander’s work broadly focusses on the intersection between land, land-use and the environment and different diseases. Her doctoral research explored factors that contributed to the spread of malaria amongst indigenous upland Pälawan communities in the Philippines. Subsequent work has assessed risk factors for zoonotic malaria infections in Malaysian Borneo; the impact of a business-led sugar levy on consumption behaviours in UK restaurants; and the impact of the use of drone technology in malaria-related research. She is currently co-investigator on a UKRI-GCRF grant (Led by Katherine Brickell, Royal Holloway), “Depleted by debt? focusing a gendered lens on climate resilience, credit, and nutrition in translocal Cambodia and south India. More recently, she has turned her attention to evaluating the effect of engaging in creative pursuits on health and wellbeing in the UK. Dalia is particularly interested in the use of participatory visual methodologies (photography, film and mapping) and understanding how these can be used to explore health as well as potentially facilitate communities to make changes in their lives.

Research Projects:

Dalia is currently leading two projects related to Creative Health; a process evaluation on green prescription services in Camden and a project exploring the effects on health and wellbeing of crafting miniatures.

She is also co-investigator on a number of other projects:

Identifying the ingredients of democratic schooling in an alternative approach to education in England (UCL Grand Challenges, 2022)
The Guarani-Mbyá case study: understanding the socio-cultural and epidemiological factors related to high immunodeficiency prevalence among indigenous communities in Argentina and Brazil (UCL Collaborative Social Science Domain Award, 2021)
Depleted by debt? Focusing a gendered lens on climate resilience, credit, and malnutrition in translocal Cambodia and South India (UK Research and Innovation/Global Challenges Research Fund, 2019)

Teaching:

Dr Iskander teaches on a range of courses on themes related to the body, multisensory experience, infectious diseases, biosocial medical anthropology and anthropological and creative methods.