SHARE Profile: Akriti Muthanna

What is your role in the SHARE project?

I’m a Research Assistant on the project team led by Dr. Manjulika Vaz at St. John’s Research Institute, India. I’m involved across the research process in work package 1 and 3. This includes the review of literature, collection, analysis and writing up of qualitative data to understand the social, ethical and practical implications of enabling environmentally sustainable health research through the use of sustainability tools. Additionally, I’m responsible for managing the day-to-day tasks associated with the project, and ensuring it stays on track.

What brought you to SHARE? 

My previous work focused on examining interventions aimed at addressing structural inequalities rooted in gender, caste and class in rural South India. During the course of my work, I researched the impact of externally designed interventions to understand how they were received by local communities and how they could be adapted in response to community feedback, contexts and geographies.

I was drawn to SHARE, as I was keen to expand my inquiry into the health sector while also deepening my understanding of the sector’s environmental impact.

What do you bring to the SHARE project?  

I bring a social research lens to the SHARE project, grounded in the understanding that meaningful and sustainable solutions must be approached through co-creation rather than uniform, top-down models. My research approach involves engaging diverse stakeholders and recognising the value of different perspectives, with the aim of generating findings that can inform context-sensitive approaches.

What excites you about this project? 

The SHARE project interests me for its focus on examining the socio-ethical dimensions of enabling environmental sustainability in health research. I’m looking forward to exploring how sustainability tools are interpreted, negotiated and reshaped in different contexts. I’m also excited about working with a diverse, multidisciplinary team spread across different countries and learning how ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’ are perceived in different geographical and institutional settings