Dr Banyana Cecilia Madi-Segwagwe MSc, PhD

Research Fellow - EDiPPPP

Dr Banyana C Madi-Segwagwe is a Research Fellow at the School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton.

My early career was as a nurse and midwife in Botswana, but I immediately took the academic route, studied for a MSc and PhD in Advanced Midwifery practice. I was lucky to get a Welcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship early in my career, which helped me to learn more about Social Statistics methods. Following my postdoctoral research, I worked for the then Initiative for Maternal Mortality Programme Assessment (IMMPACT) at the University of Aberdeen, a programme that evaluated Safe Motherhood Programs in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Indonesia. I led a small  team of researchers based in the three countries that was charged with the qualitative evaluation aspect of the program. In 2007 I joined International Development, working as Technical Advisor for Policy Development for HIV, Sexual Reproductive Health, Malaria and Tuberculosis for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an Intergovernmental organisation made up of 16 countries in Southern Africa. I was therefore very lucky to work with senior government officials in the 16 countries, collaborated with international organisations such as WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank in developing polices for the countries as well as have the opportunity to attend and present new policies to the regional Ministers of Health. In 2015, as a mother, I soon had more responsibilities looking after our son, so I opted to become an independent consultant in Sexual Reproductive Health Research in order to balance my role as professional and mother. I continued to work for SADC but on a consultancy basis. I am now back in academia working in the Eye Donation in Palliative and Hospice Care Settings: investigating Potential Practice Preferences and Perceptions (EDiPPPP) project.