SHARE Profile: Dr Manjulika Vaz

What is your role in the SHARE project?

I am a co-investigator on the project, along with Gabby and Federica. My role includes overall coordination of the research activities in the India arm of the project. This includes compliance with the statutory governance requirements at the National and institutional levels, selecting and managing the study sites, overseeing data collection processes, contributing to analysis and interpretation, and the drafting of manuscripts from the findings primarily within WP1. In addition, we will be leading WP3, which focuses on the co-creation of contextually relevant sustainability tools tailored to the challenges, capacities, and resource realities of our region and that of others in the global south.

What brought you to SHARE? 

SHARE builds on our earlier work under the SHADE (Sustainability, Health, AI, Digital Technologies, Environment) initiative where I collaborated with Federica, Gabby and Mary on an e-waste project. It included examining the environmental impact of AI and digital technologies in health research, particularly the issue of electronic waste produced due to tech obsolescence and how e-waste is handled in India. This highlighted the political, economic, and moral complexities surrounding e-waste management in the country. SHARE brings these concerns together with a focus on ethics and justice, health research and environment sustainability which is what attracted me to the project.

What do you bring to the SHARE project?  

I bring a social science and bioethical perspective to SHARE. My work on the ethical implications of novel biomedical research methods spanning biobanking research, genomic research, challenge studies among others, involved reversing the gaze from regulatory mandates to locally relevant public concerns and expectations. I bring this along with skills of qualitative research, understanding public perceptions, and public engagement to this project. The role of the health profession in understanding climate change, environmental sustainability and planetary health and addressing and mitigating the same is the focus of my Citizen Doctor course which also intersects with this project.

My work with field-level organisations in India has given me a ground level understanding of the disparities that exist across different organisational and social hierarchies in the Indian context. This will contribute to the project’s focus on the meaning of fairness in making health research more environmentally sustainable.

What excites you about this project? 

I’m excited about the diversity of partners- across geographies, disciplines, and cultural contexts. I am particularly interested in the move away from a purely tool-driven approach towards developing assessment parameters that are culturally appropriate. I am also excited about extending research ethics guidelines in India to include parameters to assess their carbon footprint and environment sustainability.

The project addresses a pressing issue that is still understudied. SHARE gives us a concrete focus, and I believe it can inform future policy and guidelines for India.