Danny Wight

Biography

Daniel studied Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University, involving four months fieldwork in rural Jamaica, and graduated in 1981. He later conducted a community study in central Scotland, focussing on working class culture, unemployment, consumption and masculinity, which became a PhD (Edinburgh University, 1987). After working on applied social science projects in the fields of education, community development and nursing, in 1990 he joined the MRC Medical Sociology Unit to conduct a qualitative study of young Glaswegian men's sexual behaviour. From this he came to lead an inter-disciplinary team to develop a theoretically based teacher-delivered sex education programme (SHARE) from 1993-96, in collaboration with the Health Education Board for Scotland, now NHS Health Scotland. Daniel led the evaluation of this programme, through a randomised trial with 25 schools complemented by a detailed process evaluation. Since 1997 Daniel has been involved in descriptive and intervention research in Tanzania and Uganda on sexual health and parent-child relationships. He led the process evaluation of a multi-component sexual health programme in Tanzania (Memakwa Vijana), in collaboration with the National Institute for Medical Research, Tanzania, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and from 2001-2010 he led the Unit's partnership in two Department for International Development programmes on HIV and sexual health in low income countries. From 2006-2015 Daniel led the Sexual Health and Families Programme and then the Children, Young People, Families and Health Programme in the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. He is now leading a research theme on the transferability of interventions.

Research Interest

Current substantive research topics include early years interventions, young people's health and lifestyles, and parent-child relationships and health outcomes in high and low income countries. Methodologically Daniel is interested in the development, evaluation and transferability of interventions, and he retains a concern with strengthening social science research capacity in Africa.