Race and the spatialisation of risk during the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic.

This paper examines the spatial navigation of risk by international health responders working in Ebola Treatment Centres (ETCs) during the West African Ebola epidemic. Drawing on Black studies and geographies it argues for a race-conscious analysis of spatial strategies of risk aversion in order to highlight the geographical, postcolonial and racial inequalities at the heart of the West African Ebola response. Based on interviews with international health responders to Liberia and Sierra Leone, it argues that the spatial organisation of ETCs perpetuated non-equivalence between Black and white lives and contributed to the normalisation of Black suffering and death.

Decolonising global health: transnational research partnerships under the spotlight.

There are increasing calls to decolonise aspects of science, and global health is no exception. The decolonising global health movement acknowledges that global health research perpetuates existing power imbalances and aims to identify concrete ways in which global health teaching and research can overcome its colonial past and present. Using the context of clinical trials implemented through transnational research partnerships (TRPs) as a case study, this narrative review brings together perspectives from clinical research and social science to lay out specific ways in which TRPs build on and perpetuate colonial power relations. We will explore three core components of TRPs: participant experience, expertise and infrastructure, and authorship. By combining a critical perspective with recently published literature we will recommend specific ways in which TRPs can be decolonised. We conclude by discussing decolonising global health as a potential practice and object of research. By doing this we intend to frame the decolonising global health movement as one that is accessible to everyone and within which we can all play an active role.