Post-Doctoral Researcher – CoRE-MH (WITS & Uppsala University)
I arrived in Uppsala on a cold March morning, carrying two suitcases of warm clothes and winter boots, a scoping review needing urgent attention, and a research proposal I felt wasn’t fully ready. After five weeks, I left with more than I had come with.
Distance becomes a tool
From 17 March to 20 April 2026, based at Uppsala University’s Global Health and Migration Unit within the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, in the small and walkable, and unhurried, Uppsala city, qualities that felt strange at first but were exactly the right place I needed. As a social scientist I know that context shapes perception. Changing my environment shifted my perspective, not merely a metaphor but a methodological principle. Uppsala gave me that shift.
Reading slowly, seeing more
One of the most grounding experiences was doing something I hadn’t had time to do properly: reading CoRE-MH’s core project documents slowly, carefully, and without distraction. That unhurried engagement helped me pinpoint my research questions within a wider intellectual context and recognise connections I had previously missed. This directly led to drafting and leading a commentary for the CoRE-MH launch event.
The academic discussions over fika (Swedish coffee and cake time), on career paths and the academic research process were also beneficial. I presented my research proposal at the Forum for African Studies, exploring Mozambican migrant women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care in South Africa. The audience was engaged and demanding. The feedback was detailed, conceptually rigorous, and at times difficult to hear, which is precisely what I needed. By the end of five weeks, I had substantially revised the proposal: new frameworks, a tighter methodology, and a clearer problem statement.
Unstable times, useful discussions
I made real progress on my scoping review, as discussions with peers from the Global Health and Migration Unit created a focused environment that enabled me to update my knowledge and work through the methodological decisions I needed to make, helping me map a clearer path forward. Sitting with that work in a different setting, away from the daily pull of my home institution, helped me see it differently and move it forward with more confidence.
The GlobeLife Workshop at Karolinska Institute, “Global Health in Flux: Strategies for Emerging Scholars Amid Funding Uncertainty,” arrived at the right moment. It gave me insight into research funding landscapes and Swedish-African institutional collaboration, and it was a real networking moment.
What I carried home
Apart from the fellowship achievements report, the CoRE-MH commentary is drafted. The research proposal has been substantially revised. A restructured scoping review is underway. International partnerships with colleagues at Uppsala and Karolinska are in progress, and an early-career Migration Health network strategy was ready for presentation in Accra (next blog).
Fellowships are often evaluated based on outputs. However, a more accurate measure is what they facilitate. The Uppsala fellowship did not disrupt my research trajectory; rather, it propelled it forward. With gratitude to WITS-ACMS/CoRE-MH and Uppsala University for making this possible, as well as Profs Jo Vearey, Soorej Puthoopparambil and to Dr. Jecinta Okumu.