
Professor Helen Lambert
D.Phil., D.Phil.(Oxon.)
Current positions
Professor of Medical Anthropology
Bristol Medical School (PHS)
Contact
Press and media
Many of our academics speak to the media as experts in their field of research. If you are a journalist, please contact the University’s Media and PR Team:
Research interests
My work uses interdisciplinary and ethnographic approaches to transform understanding of key global public health issues including antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and infectious disease, building on longstanding research in Asia into medical plurality, treatment-seeking and inequalities in access to care. I am an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and have published over 100 peer-reviewed articles as well as two edited books, the latest of which is Abrams, S., Lambert, H. and Robinson, J (eds) How to live through a pandemic (Routledge, 2023).
I am interested in the application of anthropological perspectives to a range of public health issues. These include:
Anthropological and interdisciplinary research on antimicrobial resistance
HIV prevention and sexual health in vulnerable communities in South Asia, with a particular focus on sex work
Popular understandings of health, illness and therapy
Non-biomedical therapeutic traditions in India within and outside the formal health sector
Social and cultural dimensions of health systems
Lay understandings of suicide and suicide prevention in social and kinship networks
The role of ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research evidence in the formulation and evaluation of public health interventions
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Exploring Social and Cultural Determinants of Antibiotic Use in Semi-Urban Egypt
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
30/06/2024 to 31/12/2025
Resolving the fate and studying the impact of pharmaceutical wastes on the environment and local community of a pharmaceutical manufacturing hub
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/10/2020 to 31/07/2023
COVID-19: A mixed-methods evaluation of advice on isolation and health-seeking to contain transmission
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
30/03/2020 to 31/12/2021
COVID-19: A mixed-methods evaluation of advice on isolation and health-seeking to contain transmission
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
30/03/2020 to 29/09/2021
Addressing antimicrobial resistance as a global public health issue in settings of precarity
Principal Investigator
Description
This proposal addresses the combined challenges of equitable access to sustainable development, especially SDG3 health and wellbeing, and human rights and social justice, through a focus on antimicrobial resistance (AMR)…Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/03/2020 to 31/07/2020
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Recent publications
01/12/2024A complex intervention to reduce antibiotic prescribing in rural China
The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific
Antibiotic prescribing and bacterial infection in COVID-19 inpatients in Southeast Asia
JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance
Impact of easing COVID-19 restrictions on antibiotic usage in Eastern China using wastewater-based epidemiology
Nature Communications
Impact of low-level exposure to antibiotics on bile acid homeostasis in adults
Ecotoxicology and environmental safety
The unseen use of antimicrobials
Global Public Health