The Executive Dean
Faculty of Applied Sciences
Mphatso Kamndaya holds a Ph.D. in Public Health from the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand and received postgraduate training in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the same institution. He is a Cohort 1 graduate of the Consortium of Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) and currently holds a CARTA re-entry Fellowship. He completed two post-doctoral research fellowships – one on the Wellbeing of Adolescents in Vulnerable Environments (WAVE) study at the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Institute (Wits RHI) and another on the Migration and Health Project Southern Africa (maHp) at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) both at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
His engagement with research on the wellbeing of adolescents in vulnerable environments included his doctoral research (completed in 2015) that explored context-specific measures of deprivation of material resources and links to risk of HIV acquisition among young people in Malawi and South Africa. His research involves mixed methodologies, including cross-sectional household surveys and public policy analysis. With an explicit focus on generating research to inform improved responses to adolescent sexual and reproductive health – particularly for marginalized adolescents and residents of informal settlements – he is committed to developing ways to ensure that the voice of those affected is heard by policymakers and programme implementers. He has a strong interest in impact evaluation and the ways in which research responds to the needs of society, and how research is translated and taken up into practice. Linked to this, he has been involved in multiple longitudinal, mixed-method impact evaluations examining the impacts of social protection programmes on adolescent well-being and health as part of the Transfer Project in sub-Saharan Africa with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office of research.