PARC team
Team members
Professor Isabella Aboderin
Isabella is Chair in Africa Research and Partnerships and Director of the Perivoli Africa Research Institute (PARC); and Professor of Gerontology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. Her research and engagement focus on i) the nature and need for transformation in Africa-global North research relations, and ii) issues of ageing, intergenerational relations and care in African contexts. Isabella joined the University in 2020 from the African Population and Research Center (APHRC) in Nairobi where, as senior research fellow, she established and led a research and policy engagement unit on ageing and development in Africa. In prior positions Isabella served as Associate Professor, Centre for Research on Ageing, University of Southampton; Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford; and World Health Organization technical officer in the Ageing and Lifecourse Unit. Alongside her role as extraordinary professor at North West University, South Africa, Isabella is a member of the National Academies of Science Global Commission on Healthy Longevity; the advisory board of Future Africa, University of Pretoria; and is trustee on the boards of the United Nations International Institute on Ageing (INIA) and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB).
Professor Leon Tikly
Leon joined us in February 2025 as our new Academic Director and will be co-leading PARC together with Isabella, delivering a strategic plan and vision for an expanded remit of the centre.
Leon is UNESCO Chair in Transforming Knowledge and Research for Just and Sustainable Futures and Global Chair in Education here at the University, and also co-directs the Centre for International and Comparative Education (CIRE). He was until recently PI on the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) network and has been working with PARC over the last year on a project reviewing this and another GCRF-funded network to look at equitability of global North-South research partnerships.
Email: leon.tikly@bristol.ac.uk
Dr Susan Jim
Dr Eyob Balcha Gebremariam
Eyob is winner of the 2022 Thandika Mkandawire Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in African Political Economy. His areas of research and teaching are the politics of knowledge production in, on and about Africa, decolonial knowledge production, African political economy, the politics of development and young peoples’ engagement in politics. He has a doctoral degree in Development Policy and Management from the University of Manchester. Before joining PARC as a research associate, Eyob was a Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he convened and taught postgraduate courses on African Development and African Political Economy.
Eyob is also an adjunct professor of African Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University. .
Ms Hilda Owii
Hilda Owii is a PhD student in Social Policy at the University of Bristol. At PARC, she forms part of a multi-disciplinary team to work, and build her doctoral thesis, on a research and policy engagement programme, Care Work and Economy Africa: toward transformative care systems and economies to harness Africa’s demographic transition. This chimes with her keen research interest long term care provision and receipt in sub-Saharan Africa, its dynamics, impacts, and interaction with culture.
Prior to her doctorate studies, Hilda earned an MSc. degree in Gerontology from the University of Southampton and worked at APHRC contributing to research aimed at illuminating the challenges and opportunities presented by ageing in sub-Saharan Africa, and the implications of these for development agendas in the region.
Hilda’s work experience spans long term care, health and wellbeing, resilience, and social pensions- where she has garnered considerable experience undertaking qualitative research on ageing issues.
Email: hilda.owii@bristol.ac.uk
Dr Robert Crowe
Robert is the International Research Partnerships Officer for both Perivoli Africa Research Centre and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).
Robert has worked in the University of Bristol’s Research and Enterprise Division (RED) since 2013, first with the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research (EBI), then in the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS).
Email: robert.crowe@bristol.ac.uk
Heather Child
Heather is PARC’s Communications Officer. She has 20 years’ experience in marketing and communications, mainly in the non-profit sector. Her most recent role was at the University of Bristol as Senior Communications Officer for the Community Network for Vector-borne Plant Viruses. A former Chartered Marketer, she has managed communications and marketing at a range of organisations including Milestones Trust, a large health and social care charity, and the Travel Foundation, and she has also worked as a freelance consultant.
Email: heather.child@bristol.ac.uk