Her interest in research ethics oversight began in 2004 as the lone social scientist on the Human Research Ethics Committee at Macquarie University, and over the past twenty years she has witnessed research ethics governance close-up via roles as a consultant behavioural research ethics analyst in the Office of Research Ethics at the University of British Columbia, the former Acting Associate Director of the Office of Research Ethics at Simon Fraser University (briefly) and the Chair of the Research Ethics Committee at the University of Roehampton. Although she has given up trying to transform research ethics governance from the inside, she has also sat on two national ethics advisory committees – the Canadian Anthropology Society’s Ethics Taskforce and the UK Association of Social Anthropologists’ Ethics Guidelines Working Group. Kirsten has written primarily about the problems of research ethics governance for anthropological research and also has an interest in the intersections between the governance of research ethics and publication ethics. Her current research focuses on the experiences of participants in health and medical research studies and has convinced her that while prevailing research ethics frameworks are a particularly poor fit for the social sciences, they also do not well serve the contexts they were actually designed for. Her publications on research ethics can be found here: https://www.notkristenbell.com/research-ethics
Kirsten Bell
Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology, Imperial College
Research Interests:
Kirsten is a social anthropologist (PhD, James Cook University, 2000) and has held academic appointments in anthropology departments at the University of Northern Colorado, Macquarie University in Australia, the University of British Columbia in Canada, the University of Roehampton and King's College London. She is currently Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology in the Patient Experience Research Centre at Imperial College.
