Research interests
Vicky Hosegood’s current research studies focus on the demography and health of families in sub-Saharan Africa. With a special interest in South Africa her work:
- investigates family and household factors and processes that promote health and wellbeing across the life course
- improves the measurement, collection and analysis of family demographic and health data in resource poor settings
- informs the design and evaluation of family-based interventions
Vicky has an education and research background that spans biological and social sciences, medical demography and epidemiology. She has an Honors degree in Applied Biology (Parasitology) from Imperial College, London. With MRC scholarship-funding she undertook an MSc in Medical Demography and PhD in Maternal Health (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). Early in her career she worked on a WHO leprosy vaccine programme, in a medical entomology department, with family planning and HIV services in the UK and, the national leprosy and TB programme in Pakistan. As a doctoral researcher she worked in Bangladesh on maternal nutrition and mortality of women living in communities within the ICDDR,B Matlab surveillance area.
In 1997, she joined the scientific team that established the Wellcome Trust-funded Africa Centre for Population and Health (now AHRI) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. As the senior demographer and head of Population Studies she played a key role in the design and scientific development of demographic surveillance and two decades of HIV and population health research. She was awarded a postdoctoral training fellowship by the Wellcome Trust for her work on the impact of HIV on households in KwaZulu-Natal in the period before HIV treatment was available. Vicky has also been a senior visiting scientist with the HSRC working with colleagues in studies of children affected by HIV and AIDS, men’s health and fatherhood and couples-based interventions. Since joining the University of Southampton in 2011, her research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation, ViiV Healthcare and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Throughout her career, Vicky has been involved in international demographic research networks. In 1998, she was a founding member of INDEPTH Network in 1998. In 2008, her scientific achievements in advancing household and demographic surveillance were recognised by an INDEPTH Network award. She has a long history of involvement as a co-investigator and researchers in ALPHA, a collaborative network for data analysis in African community-based, and longitudinal HIV studies. These HIV studies are undertaken as part of demographic surveillance systems (DSS) and cohort studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya. She is a member of IUSSP and BSPS.
She is a member of several research groups within the University of Southampton including Family Demography in particular that of Families in southern Africa, the ESRC-funded Centre for Population Change.
Professor Vicky HosegoodI am based in South Africa and can best be reached by email in the first instance.
Room Number : 58/4029
