About the Gender Equality and HIV Prevention Programme Team

The Programme team is made up of permanent staff based at the HEARD offices in Durban and Research Associates.

Samantha Willan - Programme Manager

Samantha Willan Samantha Willan is the Programme Manager of the Gender Equality and HIV Prevention Programme and a Research Associate at HEARD. She is also an independent HIV/AIDS consultant based in South Africa, prior to this she was Policy Adviser - HIV and AIDS and Gender at VSO, in London. She focuses on programmatic interventions and policy reform around HIV/AIDS and gender, in particular the importance of addressing gender inequalities as a key response to addressing the pandemic and mitigating the impact. She has also undertaken extensive work on HIV and AIDS and democracy and governance, and the importance of strengthening health systems as a critical part of the HIV and AIDS response. Most of her work has focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the UK and the UN system. She specialises in project design and management, policy analysis and review, capacity building and mentoring (of individuals, NGOs and CBOs), facilitation and training, research and programme evaluation. Prior to working at VSO she was Project Director at HEARD, and before that was Information Manager at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She has a Masters in Political Science from UKZN.

Contacts Details

E-mail: samantha.willan@gmail.com

Phone: +27(0)31 205 7753

Andrew Gibbs - Researcher

Andrew Gibbs Andrew Gibbs has been a Researcher at HEARD since 2008. He is a social psychologist by training with a concern for how social processes and factors impact individuals and how, in turn they can be resisted and overcome. His recent research has focused on the role social contexts play in shaping and undermining the possibilities for women's empowerment - this has included studies on the role of the media, as well as case studies on women's participation.

Andrew is also actively involved with the Health, Community and Development Group at the London School of Economics.

Prior to joining HEARD Andy was first a Research Assistant at the Institute of Social Psychology, LSE and then, for two years, a Research Fellow at the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking (HIVAN) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and was involved in analysing their Community Responses to HIV/AIDS Project.

Andrew has an MSc in Health, Community and Development from the London School of Economics, UK (LSE) and a BSc in Economics and International Development from Bath University, UK.

Contact Details

E-mail: gibbs@ukzn.ac.za

Phone: +27(0)31 260 7737

Jenevieve Mannell - Research Associate

Jenevieve Manell is a Research Associate at HEARD and a long-term collaborator with the Gender Programme. Jenevieve has a background in health communications and a long-standing interest in how ideas about health behaviours are communicated within the field of health and development. 

Jenevieve completed her Masters at the London School of Economics, UK (LSE) in 2006. Before starting her Masters, she spent a year doing a fellowship with the research department of Bangladesh's largest NGO, BRAC. 

After her Masters, she worked as a management consultant for the Canadian health care sector, exploring ways in which participatory approaches to research and policy development could be utilised so that communities and groups are true owners of health decisions and communications. Jenevieve is now back at the LSE to complete a PhD in the Gender Institute, with a particular focus on how international donor organisations have communicated the concept of gender, and subsequently how this concept is then being taken up or rejected by community organisations throughout the southern African region.

Contact Details

E-mail: j.c.mannell@lse.ac.uk

Jackie Mangoma - Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

Jaqualine Mangoma is a sociologist/anthropologist with six years of research experience focusing on development, gender and HIV and AIDS in southern Africa. She recently joined HEARD from University of South Africa where she was actively involved in teaching and developing curriculum that included gender as a key focus. Jaqualine recently graduated with a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town focusing on anthropology of development, gender & medical anthropology.  She has a Masters degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology and Bsc Honours in Sociology from the University of Zimbabwe. 

Contact Details

E-mail: mangoma@ukzn.ac.za

Phone: +27(0)31 260 2980

Milly Mushinga - Research Intern

Mildred Mushinga Mildred Mushinga recently joined HEARD as a research intern. Her interests lies in gender as a cross cutting issue and how it is mainstreamed in institutions as well as how gender specific responses are framed in tackling HIV/AIDS. Prior to joining HEARD, she worked for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and was engaged in consultancies with various development organisations including Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) formerly DED and GTZ. Her work focused on gender programme design and management, curriculum development, gender analysis and mainstreaming training for various NGOs in the fields of politics, youth empowerment as well as HIV/AIDS. Mildred has Masters in Development Studies and Gender from the University of Leeds, UK, an MSc in Sociology and Social Anthropology and BSc in Sociology from the University of Zimbabwe.

Contact Details

E-mail: mushinga@ukzn.ac.za

Phone: +27(0)31 260 8208