Dr Bianca Brijnath
PhD
Telephone: +61 3 9902 4451
Facsimile: +61 3 8575 2233
Email: bianca.brijnath@monash.edu
Profile
Bianca Brijnath is an early career researcher in medical anthropology, public health and primary health care. She has taught and researched in cross-cultural meanings of mental health and caregiving and has worked in India, Australia and Zambia. She has been awarded c. $110,000 of research funds to undertake her own research on dementia care in India. She has published nearly 20 peer-review articles, including her most prestigious award as one of eight global winners in the Young Voices in Health Research essay competition (2009) and was published on the cover of The Lancet. Much of her work is applied and is focused on how social contexts and cultural backgrounds shape individual responses to health, illness, care and wellbeing.
Bianca joined the Department of General Practice at Monash University in April 2011. Prior to this she was a Global Report Fellow on the World Health Organization's Tropical Disease Research (WHO/TDR) programme and has been involved in producing a chapter on environment and infectious disease of poverty to be released by the WHO/TDR in late 2011. Bianca also holds a consultancy with the World Bank on a project on Health Results Based Financing (HRBF) in maternal and child health in the Africa region and is responsible for qualitative evaluation of the HRBF in Zambia.
Honours and Awards
2010 - Essay selected for the Irmgard Coninx Foundation 13th Berlin Roundtable on "Health Politics in an Interconnected World"
2009 - One of eight people worldwide awarded prize by Global Forum for Health Research and The Lancet for “Young Voices in Health Research Essay Competition.”
Publications since 2007
Refereed primary publications
1. BRIJNATH, B. & Manderson, L. (Accepted, doi: 10.1007/s11013-011-9230-2). Appropriation, the MRI, and dementia in India. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.
2. Polonsky, M., BRIJNATH, B. & Renzaho, A. (2011). "They don't want our blood:" Social inclusion and blood donation among African migrants in Australia. Social Science and Medicine, 73(2), 336-342.
3. BRIJNATH, B. (Early view online, doi: 10.1017/S0144686X11000584). Why does institutionalised care not appeal to Indian families? Legislative and social answers from urban India. Ageing and Society.
4. Polonsky, M., Renzaho, A. & BRIJNATH, B. (Early view online, doi: 10.1111/j.1537-2995.2010.03053.x). Barriers to blood donation in African communities in Australia: The role of home and host country culture and experience. Transfusions.
5. BRIJNATH, B., Browne, J., Halliday, J. & Renzaho, A. (2011). The health consequences of migration: Meeting the health needs of displaced populations. Journal of Internal Displacement, 1(1), 79-92. BRIJNATH, B. (In press, accepted 1 November 2010). Alzheimer's and the Indian appetite. Medical Anthropology.
6. BRIJNATH, B. (In press, accepted 25 February 2010). Fluidity and the MMSE in India. Transcultural Psychiatry.
7. BRIJNATH, B. (In press, accepted 28 January 2010). Use of the MMSE to diagnose dementia in Delhi. Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice.
8. Polonsky, M., Renzaho, A. & BRIJNATH, B. (2010). Integrating socio-cultural paradigms in nonprofit marketing - The case of blood donation among African communities in Australia. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 7(2), 101-112.
9. Kok, M. and de Souza, D. (24 April 2010). Young voices demand health research goals. With Rafael Van den Bergh, BIANCA BRIJNATH, Alejandro Vasquez, Fabio Mendes Botelho Filho, Lingling Zhang, Luz Lopez Samaniego, Rebecca Lacroix, Christian F Rueda-Clausen, Renzo Sotomayor, Aina Palou Serra, and Brenda Ogembo. The Lancet, 375, 1416-1417.
10. BRIJNATH, B., Manton, E., Mitsch, M., Rodriguez, M. E., Wirattanapokin, S. & Yatczak, J. (2010). Post-conference reflections by emerging scholars. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 24(2), 270-273.
11. Czymoniewicz-Klippel, M., BRIJNATH, B. & Crockett, B. (2010). Ethics and the promotion of inclusiveness within qualitative research: Case examples from Asia and the Pacific. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(5), 332-351.
12. BRIJNATH, B. (2009). Familial bonds and boarding passes: Understanding caregiving in a transnational context. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16(1), 83-101. BRIJNATH, B. (November, 2009). Pens and Needles. Young Voices in Health Research 2009, Published by Global Forum for Health Research and the Lancet. Impact factor: 28.4
13. BRIJNATH, B. (2008). The legislative and political contexts surrounding dementia care in India. Ageing and Society, 28(7), 913-934.
14. BRIJNATH, B. & Manderson, L. (2008). Discipline in chaos: Foucault, dementia and ageing in India. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 32(4), 607-626.
15. BRIJNATH, B. (2007). It's about TIME: Engendering AIDS in Africa. Culture, Health and Sexuality, 9(4), 371-386.
Conferences
1. Ahlin, T. & BRIJNATH, B. (2011). Session Chairs for, ‘Moving Beyond the Clinic: Tracing the Tidemarks of Technology in Medicine.' American Anthropological Association, 16th- 20th November, Montreal, Canada.
2. BRIJNATH, B. & Ahlin, T. (2011). ‘Online vaidyas and shrinks: Access to healthcare beyond the clinic.' American Anthropological Association, 16th- 20th November, Montreal, Canada.
3. BRIJNATH, B. (2011). ‘India and her global patients: How citizenship, capital and technology are rescripting access to medicines.' EASA Conference on Medical Pluralism, Techniques, Politics, Institutions, 7th-10th September, Rome, Italy.
4. BRIJNATH, B. (2011). ‘Cognitive impairment beyond numbers: When scores are discounted to preserve quality of life.' Society for Applied Anthropology, 29th March - 2nd April, Seattle, USA.
5. BRIJNATH, B. (2010). ‘In the ethnographer's suitcase: Kinship, capital and technology.' Irmgard Coninx Foundation 13th Berlin Roundtable on Health Politics in an Interconnected World, 1st - 5th December, Berlin, Germany.
6. Polonsky, M., Renzaho, A. & BRIJNATH, B. (2010). ‘Understanding barriers and enablers to donate blood of Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees: Preliminary focus group results.' ANZMAC Annual Conference, 29th November - 1st December, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
7. BRIJNATH, B. (2010). ‘Tools for impact analysis: Qualitative research.' Results Based Financing for Health Impact Evaluation Workshop, 18th - 22nd October, Regency Hotel, Tunis, Tunisia.
8. Polonsky, M., Renzaho, A. & BRIJNATH, B. (2010). ‘Understanding barriers and enablers to donate blood of Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees: preliminary focus group results.' Annual Red Cross Blood Service R&BD Meeting, 31st May - 1st June, Stamford Plaza, Melbourne, Australia.
9. BRIJNATH, B. (2009). ‘Cognition as object and praxis'. Annual Meeting of the Australian Anthropology Society, 9-11 December, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
10. BRIJNATH, B. (2009). ‘Pens and Needles.' Plenary presentation at the Global Forum for Health Meeting - Innovating for the health for all, 16-20 November, Havana, Cuba.
11. BRIJNATH, B. (2009). ‘Seeing is believing: Diagnosing dementia in Delhi'. Poster presented at the Society for Medical Anthropology Conference, 24-27 September, Yale University, New Haven, US.
12. BRIJNATH, B. (2008). ‘Is maintaining identity a viable method of treatment for people living with dementia? Poster presented at the XIV Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India National Conference, 27-28 September, Bangalore.
13. BRIJNATH, B. (2008). ‘Alzheimer's disease and ageing in India: Implications'. Guest lecturer at Centre for Physiotherapy and Rehabilitative Sciences, Jamia Milia University, 19 September 2008, New Delhi, India.
14. BRIJNATH, B. (2008). ‘The 4W's of Alzheimer's disease: Who, what, where, and why?' Guest lecturer at The Management of Dementia Programme, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, 20-24 April, New Delhi, India.
15. BRIJNATH, B. (2007). Discipline in chaos: A Foucauldian analyses of late-stage dementia care. Paper presented at Colloquium: Foucault and/in the Social Sciences, 12-13 November, Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.
16. BRIJNATH, B. (2007). ‘Most of them come from respectable middle-class families, and suddenly find themselves lost': Dementia care as a middle-class conundrum in India. Paper presented at the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference 2007, 30 October- 2 November, Canberra, Australia.
17. BRIJNATH, B. (2007). Familial bonds and boarding passes: Understanding caregiving in a transnational context. Paper presented at Transitions Conference: Health and Mobility in Asia and the Pacific, 24-26 June, Melbourne, Australia.
