Postgraduate research students

Ibrahim Juldeh SESAY

Email: 3041335S@student.gla.ac.uk

Tell: +447442702322

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Research title: Research proposal approved by potential supervisor after sharing and discussing it with her

Research summary

Climate-related health risks in African cities are increasingly recognised as urgent, complex, and unevenly distributed. However, the systems through which these risks are understood and addressed continue to be imagined through relatively narrow and formalised frameworks that prioritise official institutions, technical infrastructures, and state-recognised actors. Such approaches often overlook the heterogeneous networks of actors, practices, knowledge, and everyday infrastructures through which urban residents, particularly those living in informal settlements, actually anticipate, negotiate, and respond to climate-related risks.

My PhD research aims to examine how climate-related risks are experienced and governed across the interconnected infrastructures of housing, water, energy, and care in Freetown, Sierra Leone. I am particulalry interested in how moments of climate-related crisis, including flooding, heat, prolonged blackouts, and disease outbreaks, reshape whose knowledge and practices become vsisble, recognised, and considered legitimate in urban climate-health response.

Working across southern urbanism, the anthropology of bureaucracy, recognition theory, critical global health, and planetary health, I am developing the argument that recognition, not exposure or vulnerability, is the operative mechanism through which climate-health governance produces protection and/or neglect in post-colonial African cities.

Anchored institutionally within the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC), this study will adopts a single-sited ethnography comprising three complementary strands:

  1. Institutional and digital ethnography of the climate-and-health apparatus
  2. Settlement/neighbourhood ethnography of everyday infrastructural life, and
  3. Event ethnography of institutional convenings and crisis moments. 

Supervisors

Grants

  • January 2026: Climate Urgency (C-Urge) PhD Scholarship within the College of Social Sciences (COSS), University of Glasgow.

  • September 2023: Felix Scholarship, University of Oxford - Recieved fully funded schsolarship to pursue an MSc in Translation Health Sciences

During my role as a Researcher at the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (2020-2026), I contributed to a range of funded research programmes, with responsibilities spanning field data collection, engagement with community co-researchers, evidence synthesis, and the development of sections of competitive grant applications.

  • Strengthening Responsiveness of Health Services Provision to Extreme Weather Events for Urban Marginalised People (2023) | Ref Number: NIHR204854 | Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) | Award: £2,999,962, Multi-country programme (Kenya, Sierra Leone, India) using participatory action research to co-produce climate-adapted health interventions with communities and health-systems actors | Role: Researcher - Contributed in data collection to generate evidence from study sites supporting justification and design of the application, and contributed to the introduction and literature review sections of the grant application.
  • The Urban Futures Project: Toward Health Equity, Inclusive Governance, and Climate Adaptation in African Informal Settlements (2023) | Funders: New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF, Canada) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) | Award: CAD $1,999,501, Interdisciplinary programme across Freetown, Kampala, and Bulawayo; community-based participatory research and co-production of climate-adaptation strategies with local stakeholders | Role: Co-Applicant - Supported the development of the grant application through contributing to the research design, development of the methodological and implementation approach, synthesis of contextual and empirical evidence, and articulation of the project's objectives, activities, and expected contributions. 
  • ARISE Sierra Leone COVID-19 Responsive Fund (2022) | Funder: UKRI/Global Challenge Research Fund | Award: £50,000 to provide relief support to residents in 3 informal settlements in Freetown | Role: Research Assistant - Contributed to the engagement of co-researchers to gather further evidence to support application, and drafting sections of the document, including project activities and implementation plan.

Additional information

PUBLICATIONS

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Peer-reviewed journal articles

  • Sesay, I. J. (first author), Sesay, S., Wurie-Kamara, H., Tengbe, S. M., Fullah, S., Vangahun, D., Gandi, I., de Siqueira Filha, N. T., Lakshman, R., Conteh, A., Saidu, S., Koroma, B., Mansaray, B., Elsey, H., Whittaker, L., Dean, L., Georgi, N. W., Nganda, M., Refell, F.,…Kibuchi, E. (2026). Intersectional inequalities in healthcare utilisation in informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone: a multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA). International Journal for Equity in Health, 25(1), 131. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-026-02851-w
  • Sesay, S., Sesay, I. J. (second author, joint lead), Tengbe, S. M., Wurie, H., Fullah, S., Vangahun, D., Gandi, I., Teixeira de Siqueira Filha, N., Lakshman, R. W. D., Conteh, A., Saidu, S., Koroma, B., Mansaray, B., Elsey, H., Whittaker, L., Dean, L., Wiltgen Georgi, N., Nganda, M., Refell, F., … Kibuchi, E. (2026). Household determinants of healthcare utilisation in three informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional survey. BMJ Open, 16(3), e108022. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2025-108022
  • Sullaiman Fullah, Dora Vangahun, Ibrahim Gandi, Eliud Kibuchi, Samira Sesay, Ibrahim Juldeh Sesay, Sia Morenike Tengbe, Braima Koroma, Rajith W. D. Lakshman, Helen Elsey, Zahidul Quayyum, Abu Conteh1, Samuel Saidu, Lana Whittaker, Neele Wiltgen Georgi, Sadaf Khan, Dolf te Lintelo, Rachel Tolhurst, Noemia Teixeira de Siqueira Filha; The Economic Burden of Healthcare Utilisation: Findings from a Health and Well-being Survey in Informal Settlements of Freetown, Sierra Leone, 19 December 2024, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-025-00960-5
  • ARISE Consortium (2024). Improving Accountability for Equitable Health and Well-being in Urban Informal Spaces: Moving from Dominant to Transformative Approaches. Progress in Development Studies, 24(4), 301–320. https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231225530

 

Research reports and policy outputs

Blog and dissemination outputs

Ibrahim Juldeh Sesay, Samira Sesay, Samuel Saidu, Ibrahim Gandi, Abu Conteh and Hayley Stewart, Communicating research through art: ‘Power of Light’ case study in Dwarzark, Freetown - Arise (ariseconsortium.org)