Introduction
As part of my participation in the TechChange Course “Mobiles for International Development”, I conducted an interview with professor Laura Murphy at Tulane University’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine and Payson Center for International Development.
Mini Biography
Laura Murphy is clinical associate professor in the Department of Global Health Systems and Development at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (SPHTM). Her teaching spans development, population, environment, and interdisciplinary social science research, and in 2008 she earned the President’s Award for Excellence in Professional and Graduate Teaching. She is also an adjunct associate professor at Tulane’s Payson Center for International Development and an affiliated faculty member at Tulane’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies. She holds a BS from Stanford in Mechanical Engineering, Values, Technology & Society, and a doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill in City & Regional Planning.
Interview Notes
I spoke with Dr. Murphy today (Monday, November 21, 2011) about the technologies we’ve encountered in the TC105 course, her views on some of them, and where she sees the future of the field going. Dr. Murphy’s work focuses on social change in rural Africa and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in that region, as well as mobile phone use in the region. Here are some of Dr. Murphy’s (paraphrased) comments on the field, the merits and pitfalls of some of these technologies, and her vision for the future.
Ports in the Storm 