Jean-Benoît Falisse
Biographic Data
| ID | 130153 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jean-Benoît Falisse |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jean-Benoît |
| FAMILY NAME | Falisse |
| SIGNATURE | FALISSE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0291-731X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Bridging and bending state and society: Citizen committees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
We examine the citizen committees set up to enhance public service delivery. They describe themselves and are depicted by aid and government actors alike as authentic community representatives aligned with a voluntarist ethos. While extensive scholarship debates the benefits and perils of the proliferation of and over-reliance on committees (‘committeefication’), we shift the lens to the politico-administrative settlement these committees help co…
Violence Against Teachers and the Entanglement of Schools in Violent Conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Violence against teachers in conflict-affected regions has devastating consequences on their well-being and work, yet there is limited research on its drivers. In this article, we carry out a mixed-methods analysis of the causes of violence against teachers in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), leveraging a longitudinal survey of 932 teachers in 55 schools and 211 qualitative interviews. We find that 43.3 percent of teachers in t…
How can we talk about our struggles?” reflections on researcher wellbeing and recommendations for psychosocial support for researchers in conflict-affected areas
First, echoing calls for a feminist ethics of care, the article recognises emotional responses as an inherent part of ethical research practice. Second, it articulates the benefits of local wellbeing champions. Third, it highlights that researcher wellbeing support should be a multifaceted and ongoing process rather than a one size fits all once-off event. Fourth, it calls for structural change to recognise emotional challenges as part of researc…
Anchors, archipelagos, and ports of departure: How resettlement shapes im/mobilities in Nyarugusu refugee camp, Tanzania
Displacement, Borders, and Unsettling Narratives: Critical Directions for Higher Education
Minimal computing in refugee education in Uganda: Economies of digital use and non-use, and the right constraints
Using the Foundations for All (FFA) project as a frame for broader discussions of minimal computing, this paper expores education for displaced populations in Uganda and the role technology has in that education. FFA (2018–2022) was a collaboration designed to develop and implement a blended bridging programme for refugee students to participate in universities in Uganda. This paper explores the role that digital technologies had to play in this …
Traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine and the provision of health care to internally displaced persons in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Introduction Traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) providers are central for many when seeking healthcare. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are no exception. This paper seeks to better understand the use of TCAM by IDPs and its connection with the local integration of IDPs into the social fabric of the communities where they have taken refuge. We compare IDPs and non-IDPs access to TCAM providers and their level of confide…
Incentivising Textbooks for Self-Study: Experimental Evidence from the Democratic Republic of the Congo
We designed and randomly evaluated the impact of textbooks for a self-study scheme in eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo targeting student achievement in primary schools. Students in treatment schools were 7 percentage points more likely to pass the national exam, and those who passed obtained higher scores. We also evidence higher scores on a French language test. The effects are primarily driven by student interest in textboo…
Thank You to Reviewers
Influence of conspiracy theories and distrust of community health volunteers on adherence to Covid-19 guidelines and vaccine uptake in Kenya
Public trust is key for compliance to government protocols in times of health mitigating COVID-19 measures and its vaccination initiative, and thus understanding factors related to community health volunteers (CHVs) trusting the government and conspiracy theories is vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of universal health coverage in Kenya will benefit from the trust between the CHVs and the government through increased access and dema…
Strengthening the community governance of healthcare services in ‘fragile’ settings: Evidence from Burundi and South Kivu, DR Congo
Community governance, the direct (co-)management of public services by community members, is a popular approach to improve the quality of, and access to, healthcare services–including in so-called ‘fragile’ states. The effectiveness of such approach is, however, debated, and scholars and practitioners have emphasised the need to properly reflect on the contextual features that may influence social accountability interventions. We study a randomis…
Perceptions of Covid-19 in faith communities in DR Congo
This article explores the perceptions of COVID-19 among faith communities in north-eastern DR Congo and their intersection with public health responses to disease outbreaks. In a situation of a political and economic insecurity and significant unaddressed health needs, faith communities have a strong trusted public presence and offer resilience in the face of political insecurity, limited state intervention and outbreaks of disease. Semi-structur…
Engaging faith communities in public health messaging in response to Covid-19: Lessons learnt from the pandemic in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo
Purpose: To understand challenges faced by faith leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in engaging with current public health strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic; to explain why long-standing collaborations between government, faith-based health services and leaders of faith communities had little impact; to identify novel approaches to develop effective messaging that resonates with local communities. Methods: A qualitative particip…
Visualising policy responses during health emergencies. Learning from the Covid-19 policy trackers
Data visualisations are intimately connected to the emergence of public health as a discipline and policy area. Besides the mapping of cases and deaths, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an explosion of attempts to track policy responses. They have come from actors sometimes initially unfamiliar with public and global health. In this paper, we analyse seven of the most successful tracker initiatives that have sought to map governments’ reactions to …
Saving Up for a Rainy Day? Savings Groups and Resilience to Flooding in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
This paper explores the role of savings groups in resilience to urban climate-related disasters. Savings groups are a rapidly growing phenomenon in Africa. They are decentralized, non-institutional groups that provide millions of people excluded from the formal banking sector with a trusted, accessible, and relatively simple source of microfinance. Yet there is little work on the impacts of savings groups on resilience to disasters. In this paper…
Conflict, epidemic and faith communities: Church-state relations during the fight against Covid-19 in north-eastern DR Congo
In the short run, depoliticization may help address health emergencies, but in the longer run and in the absence of a credible space for discussion, it may affect the constructive criticism of health system responses and health system strengthening. The faith leaders are putting forward the desire for a relationship that is not just subordination of the religious to the imperatives of health care but a dialogue that allows the experiences of the …
Health work and skills in the last mile of disease elimination. Experiences from sleeping sickness health workers in South Sudan and DR Congo
Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is considered a highly promising candidate for elimination within the next decade. This paper argues that the experiential knowledge of frontline health workers will be critical to achieve this goal. Interviews are used to explore the ways in which HAT workers understand, maintain, and adjust their skills amidst global and national challenges. We contrast two cases: South Sudan where HAT expertise is scattered …
Pathways to care: IDPs seeking health support and justice for sexual and gender-based violence through social connections in Garowe and Kismayo, Somalia and South Kivu, DRC
A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face. This study focuses on gender-based violence (SGBV), an issue often exacerbated in times of forced displacement, and adds to extant debates by considering the wide range of social connections (pathways and actors) involved in providing care beyond the formal biomedical (and justice) system. This research asks, who do IDPs turn t…
Clinical trials as disease control? The political economy of sleeping sickness in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1996-2016)
Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), commonly known as sleeping sickness, is closer than ever to being eliminated as a public health problem. The main narratives for the impressive drop in cases allude to drugs discovery and global financing and coordination. They raise questions about the relationship between well-funded international clinical research and much less well-endowed national disease control programmes. They need to be complemented w…
Does legal aid improve access to justice in 'fragile' settings? Evidence from Burundi
Access to justice is often described as key for building and consolidating peace and enhancing socio-economic development in fragile and post-conflict states. Since the 2000s, legal empowerment has been one of the most popular approaches to improve such access, and a growing literature has presented mixed evidence on the quality of its outcomes. We evaluate and discuss the impact of a locally provisioned legal aid program on justice-seekers' use …
Class in camps or the camped class? The making and reshaping of socio-economic inequalities in the refugee camps of north-western Tanzania
Can class help understand refugee camp dynamics? We mobilise the concepts of exploitation, life chances, and cultural and social capital to analyse socio-economic stratification and inequality in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. The research draws from a longitudinal survey with Congolese and Burundian refugee households and over 200 qualitative interviews carried out in 2017-2020. We show that camp residents, especially repeat Burundian refug…
Why have so many African leaders died of Covid-19
This paper provides evidence that the COVID-19-related mortality rate of national government ministers and heads of state has been substantially higher than that of people with a similar sex and age profile in the general population, a trend that is driven by African cases (17 out of 24 reported deaths worldwide, as of 6 February 2021). Ministers’ work frequently puts them in close contact with diverse groups, and therefore at higher risk of cont…
Inequalities in higher education in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A scoping review of the literature
Do Anti-Corruption Messages Improve Public Service Delivery? Insights from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Burundi
This paper explores the effects of anti-corruption sensitisation messages on bribe-taking and public service delivery. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi, 527 public servants were asked to allocate rationed vouchers between anonymous citizens; some of these citizens attempted to bribe the public servants to obtain more vouchers than entitled. Two groups of public servants were randomly exposed to similar short messages that called …
Citizens Committees and Local Elites: Elite Capture, Captured Elites, and Absent Elites in Health Facility Committees
Mainstream development policies often promote citizens committees to oversee basic social services. Such committees require influence over, and legitimacy among, service providers and citizens to perform their roles, which local elites can help or hinder. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse the situation in 251 health facility committees in Burundi, part of which benefited from interventions designed to bolster their relationship with loca…
Class in camps or the camped class? The making and reshaping of socio-economic inequalities in the refugee camps of north-western Tanzania
Can class help understand refugee camp dynamics? We mobilise the concepts of exploitation, life chances, and cultural and social capital to analyse socio-economic stratification and inequality in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. The research draws from a longitudinal survey with Congolese and Burundian refugee households and over 200 qualitative interviews carried out in 2017-2020. We show that camp residents, especially repeat Burundian refug…
Anchors, archipelagos, and ports of departure: How resettlement shapes im/mobilities in Nyarugusu refugee camp, Tanzania
Social Engineering for Reintegration: Peace Villages for the ‘Uprooted’ Returnees in Burundi
In the 2000s, the government of Burundi and the United Nations created villages to permanently reintegrate over 5,000 uprooted families. Most of these ‘Peace Villages’ soon became areas of socio-economic instability. The dominant narrative blames inefficient aid coordination, while returnees deplore their marginalization in the process and in local communities. The idea of villages epitomizing ‘development’, economic interests in building village…
Performance-based financing in the context of selective free health-care: An evaluation of its effects on the use of primary health-care services in Burundi using routine data
BACKGROUND: Performance-based financing (PBF) is an increasingly adopted strategy in low- and middle-income countries. PBF pilot projects started in Burundi in 2006, at the same time when a national policy removed user fees for pregnant women and children below 5 years old. METHODS: PBF was gradually extended to the 17 provinces of the country. This roll-out and data from the national health information system are exploited to assess the impact o…
Pathways to care: IDPs seeking health support and justice for sexual and gender-based violence through social connections in Garowe and Kismayo, Somalia and South Kivu, DRC
A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face. This study focuses on gender-based violence (SGBV), an issue often exacerbated in times of forced displacement, and adds to extant debates by considering the wide range of social connections (pathways and actors) involved in providing care beyond the formal biomedical (and justice) system. This research asks, who do IDPs turn t…
When information is not power: Community-elected health facility committees and health facility performance indicators
Au-delà du modèle voyageur ? Usage stratégique et hybridation du financement basé sur la performance (FBP) dans la santé au Burundi
Le financement basé sur la performance (FBP) a amplement voyagé en Afrique. Une analyse des entretiens avec des acteurs clefs et de la littérature grise montre que sa mise en œuvre au Burundi répond à un usage stratégique, comme outil de réalisation de la politique de gratuité partielle des soins, et renforce une élite technocratique au ministère de la Santé. Saisir cette reterritorialisation politique et stratégique est fondamental pour la compr…
Does legal aid improve access to justice in 'fragile' settings? Evidence from Burundi
Access to justice is often described as key for building and consolidating peace and enhancing socio-economic development in fragile and post-conflict states. Since the 2000s, legal empowerment has been one of the most popular approaches to improve such access, and a growing literature has presented mixed evidence on the quality of its outcomes. We evaluate and discuss the impact of a locally provisioned legal aid program on justice-seekers' use …
Indigenous medicine and biomedical health care in fragile settings: Insights from Burundi
This study contributes to the health policy debate on medical systems integration by describing and analysing the interactions between health-care users, indigenous healers, and the biomedical public health system, in the so far rarely documented case of post-conflict Burundi. We adopt a mixed-methods approach combining (1) data from an existing survey on access to health-care, with 6,690 individuals, and (2) original interviews and focus groups …
Social Engineering for Reintegration: Peace Villages for the ‘Uprooted’ Returnees in Burundi
In the 2000s, the government of Burundi and the United Nations created villages to permanently reintegrate over 5,000 uprooted families. Most of these ‘Peace Villages’ soon became areas of socio-economic instability. The dominant narrative blames inefficient aid coordination, while returnees deplore their marginalization in the process and in local communities. The idea of villages epitomizing ‘development’, economic interests in building village…
Performance-based financing in the context of selective free health-care: An evaluation of its effects on the use of primary health-care services in Burundi using routine data
BACKGROUND: Performance-based financing (PBF) is an increasingly adopted strategy in low- and middle-income countries. PBF pilot projects started in Burundi in 2006, at the same time when a national policy removed user fees for pregnant women and children below 5 years old. METHODS: PBF was gradually extended to the 17 provinces of the country. This roll-out and data from the national health information system are exploited to assess the impact o…
Indigenous medicine and biomedical health care in fragile settings: Insights from Burundi
This study contributes to the health policy debate on medical systems integration by describing and analysing the interactions between health-care users, indigenous healers, and the biomedical public health system, in the so far rarely documented case of post-conflict Burundi. We adopt a mixed-methods approach combining (1) data from an existing survey on access to health-care, with 6,690 individuals, and (2) original interviews and focus groups …
Au-delà du modèle voyageur ? Usage stratégique et hybridation du financement basé sur la performance (FBP) dans la santé au Burundi
Le financement basé sur la performance (FBP) a amplement voyagé en Afrique. Une analyse des entretiens avec des acteurs clefs et de la littérature grise montre que sa mise en œuvre au Burundi répond à un usage stratégique, comme outil de réalisation de la politique de gratuité partielle des soins, et renforce une élite technocratique au ministère de la Santé. Saisir cette reterritorialisation politique et stratégique est fondamental pour la compr…
When information is not power: Community-elected health facility committees and health facility performance indicators
Why have so many African leaders died of Covid-19
This paper provides evidence that the COVID-19-related mortality rate of national government ministers and heads of state has been substantially higher than that of people with a similar sex and age profile in the general population, a trend that is driven by African cases (17 out of 24 reported deaths worldwide, as of 6 February 2021). Ministers’ work frequently puts them in close contact with diverse groups, and therefore at higher risk of cont…
Inequalities in higher education in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A scoping review of the literature
Do Anti-Corruption Messages Improve Public Service Delivery? Insights from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Burundi
This paper explores the effects of anti-corruption sensitisation messages on bribe-taking and public service delivery. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi, 527 public servants were asked to allocate rationed vouchers between anonymous citizens; some of these citizens attempted to bribe the public servants to obtain more vouchers than entitled. Two groups of public servants were randomly exposed to similar short messages that called …
Citizens Committees and Local Elites: Elite Capture, Captured Elites, and Absent Elites in Health Facility Committees
Mainstream development policies often promote citizens committees to oversee basic social services. Such committees require influence over, and legitimacy among, service providers and citizens to perform their roles, which local elites can help or hinder. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse the situation in 251 health facility committees in Burundi, part of which benefited from interventions designed to bolster their relationship with loca…
Ignorance and Global Health: Strategies and actors of the Covid-19 response in so-called ‘developing’ countries
The Covid-19 pandemic provides a novel opportunity to study the production of knowledge in the face of an ‘unknown but knowable’ global disease, particularly in the settings favored by ‘global health’ interventions: the so-called developing countries. This article focuses on the responses of fifteen African and Asian countries (with particular attention to India and the DRC). These responses fall into three broad categories, which in its own way …
Ignorance et santé globale: Stratégies et acteurs de la réponse à la Covid-19 dans des pays dits des Suds
La pandémie de Covid-19 constitue un prisme inédit pour l’étude de la production de connaissances face à une maladie globale « inconnue mais connaissable », en particulier dans les contextes d’intervention privilégiés de la « santé globale », les pays dits « des Suds ». Cet article se concentre sur les réponses de quinze pays africains et asiatiques (en portant une attention particulière à l’Inde et à la RDC). Ces réponses rentrent dans trois gra…
Engaging faith communities in public health messaging in response to Covid-19: Lessons learnt from the pandemic in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo
Purpose: To understand challenges faced by faith leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in engaging with current public health strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic; to explain why long-standing collaborations between government, faith-based health services and leaders of faith communities had little impact; to identify novel approaches to develop effective messaging that resonates with local communities. Methods: A qualitative particip…
Visualising policy responses during health emergencies. Learning from the Covid-19 policy trackers
Data visualisations are intimately connected to the emergence of public health as a discipline and policy area. Besides the mapping of cases and deaths, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an explosion of attempts to track policy responses. They have come from actors sometimes initially unfamiliar with public and global health. In this paper, we analyse seven of the most successful tracker initiatives that have sought to map governments’ reactions to …
Saving Up for a Rainy Day? Savings Groups and Resilience to Flooding in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
This paper explores the role of savings groups in resilience to urban climate-related disasters. Savings groups are a rapidly growing phenomenon in Africa. They are decentralized, non-institutional groups that provide millions of people excluded from the formal banking sector with a trusted, accessible, and relatively simple source of microfinance. Yet there is little work on the impacts of savings groups on resilience to disasters. In this paper…
Conflict, epidemic and faith communities: Church-state relations during the fight against Covid-19 in north-eastern DR Congo
In the short run, depoliticization may help address health emergencies, but in the longer run and in the absence of a credible space for discussion, it may affect the constructive criticism of health system responses and health system strengthening. The faith leaders are putting forward the desire for a relationship that is not just subordination of the religious to the imperatives of health care but a dialogue that allows the experiences of the …
Health work and skills in the last mile of disease elimination. Experiences from sleeping sickness health workers in South Sudan and DR Congo
Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is considered a highly promising candidate for elimination within the next decade. This paper argues that the experiential knowledge of frontline health workers will be critical to achieve this goal. Interviews are used to explore the ways in which HAT workers understand, maintain, and adjust their skills amidst global and national challenges. We contrast two cases: South Sudan where HAT expertise is scattered …
Pathways to care: IDPs seeking health support and justice for sexual and gender-based violence through social connections in Garowe and Kismayo, Somalia and South Kivu, DRC
A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face. This study focuses on gender-based violence (SGBV), an issue often exacerbated in times of forced displacement, and adds to extant debates by considering the wide range of social connections (pathways and actors) involved in providing care beyond the formal biomedical (and justice) system. This research asks, who do IDPs turn t…
Clinical trials as disease control? The political economy of sleeping sickness in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1996-2016)
Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), commonly known as sleeping sickness, is closer than ever to being eliminated as a public health problem. The main narratives for the impressive drop in cases allude to drugs discovery and global financing and coordination. They raise questions about the relationship between well-funded international clinical research and much less well-endowed national disease control programmes. They need to be complemented w…
Does legal aid improve access to justice in 'fragile' settings? Evidence from Burundi
Access to justice is often described as key for building and consolidating peace and enhancing socio-economic development in fragile and post-conflict states. Since the 2000s, legal empowerment has been one of the most popular approaches to improve such access, and a growing literature has presented mixed evidence on the quality of its outcomes. We evaluate and discuss the impact of a locally provisioned legal aid program on justice-seekers' use …
Class in camps or the camped class? The making and reshaping of socio-economic inequalities in the refugee camps of north-western Tanzania
Can class help understand refugee camp dynamics? We mobilise the concepts of exploitation, life chances, and cultural and social capital to analyse socio-economic stratification and inequality in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. The research draws from a longitudinal survey with Congolese and Burundian refugee households and over 200 qualitative interviews carried out in 2017-2020. We show that camp residents, especially repeat Burundian refug…
Influence of conspiracy theories and distrust of community health volunteers on adherence to Covid-19 guidelines and vaccine uptake in Kenya
Public trust is key for compliance to government protocols in times of health mitigating COVID-19 measures and its vaccination initiative, and thus understanding factors related to community health volunteers (CHVs) trusting the government and conspiracy theories is vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of universal health coverage in Kenya will benefit from the trust between the CHVs and the government through increased access and dema…
Strengthening the community governance of healthcare services in ‘fragile’ settings: Evidence from Burundi and South Kivu, DR Congo
Community governance, the direct (co-)management of public services by community members, is a popular approach to improve the quality of, and access to, healthcare services–including in so-called ‘fragile’ states. The effectiveness of such approach is, however, debated, and scholars and practitioners have emphasised the need to properly reflect on the contextual features that may influence social accountability interventions. We study a randomis…
Perceptions of Covid-19 in faith communities in DR Congo
This article explores the perceptions of COVID-19 among faith communities in north-eastern DR Congo and their intersection with public health responses to disease outbreaks. In a situation of a political and economic insecurity and significant unaddressed health needs, faith communities have a strong trusted public presence and offer resilience in the face of political insecurity, limited state intervention and outbreaks of disease. Semi-structur…
Displacement, Borders, and Unsettling Narratives: Critical Directions for Higher Education
Minimal computing in refugee education in Uganda: Economies of digital use and non-use, and the right constraints
Using the Foundations for All (FFA) project as a frame for broader discussions of minimal computing, this paper expores education for displaced populations in Uganda and the role technology has in that education. FFA (2018–2022) was a collaboration designed to develop and implement a blended bridging programme for refugee students to participate in universities in Uganda. This paper explores the role that digital technologies had to play in this …
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Economic growth (10 works) · Nursing (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Business (7 works)