Postdoctoral Researcher

I initially trained as a medical doctor in Guinea, where a brief clinical career was interrupted and irrevocably reoriented by the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak. Witnessing the epidemic’s social rupture taught me that biomedical and public health responses, however technically sound, fail when severed from the cultural worlds in which illness is lived. That recognition redirected my trajectory from clinical practice toward social science and medical anthropology.

I hold a Master of Public Health with a focus on Social and Behavioural Sciences from the University of Ghana–Legon (2019), and an MSc in Medical Anthropology from Brunel University London (2022). Both programmes anchored me in ethnographic fieldwork across rural and urban settings, where I engaged communities around infectious diseases including Lassa fever and Covid-19. In 2026, I completed my PhD in Environmental Humanities at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. My doctoral research examined the social worlds of biomedical research on Lassa fever in Bong County (Liberia), locally known as the “Lassa belt”, where the everyday life of rural communities is entangled with surveillance, isolation, survivorship, blood sampling, and the moral economies of consent and compensation.

At BNITM, I extend this inquiry toward the human-animal-environment interfaces through which zoonotic diseases emerge and persist. My primary empirical focus is Lassa fever in affected West African communities, situated within a broader interest in viral haemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola, and in the structural conditions — extractivism, hunting practices, and environmental degradation — that generate spillover risk. I approach these questions at the intersection of medical anthropology, disease ecology, and One Health.

Research interests: Anthropology of epidemics, disease ecology, STS, global health preparedness, One Health, zoonoses, vaccine hesitancy, community engagement. 

Selected publications:

Douno, Moussa 2026: Living in the Lassa Belt: Biomedical Research, Extractive Exchange, and the Weight of Viral Atmospheres in Liberia. PhD thesis. https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/37381/1/Douno_Moussa.pdf

Rocha C, Douno M, Landsmann L, Diallo K, Wood R, Arvand M, et al. (2026) Healthcare workers’ beliefs, practices and experiences regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting governance from preparedness and response plans in Faranah, Guinea. PLOS Glob Public Health 6(3): e0004848. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004848

J Mariën, M Sage, U Bangura, A Lamé, M Koropogui, T Rieger, B Soropogui, M Douno, N Magassouba & E Fichet-Calvet (2024). Rodent control strategies and Lassa virus: some unexpected effects in Guinea, West Africa. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/22221751.2024.2341141?needAccess=true  

Douno M, Rocha C, Borchert M, Nabe I, Müller SA (2023) Qualitative assessment of hand hygiene knowledge, attitudes and practices among healthcare workers prior to the implementation of the WHO Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy at Faranah Regional Hospital, Guinea. PLOS Glob Public Health 3(2): e0001581. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001581

A Delamou, M Douno, AM El Ayadi, A Diallo, T Delvaux, V de Brouwere (2022). Stakeholder perceptions on improving women's health after obstetric fistula repair: results of a qualitative study in Guinea. Afr J Reprod Santé 2022; 26[8] :30-40 DOI : 10.29063/AJRH2022/V26i8.4 https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajrh/article/view/231897  

Clark, J., Yakob, L., Douno, M. et al. Domestic risk factors for increased rodent abundance in a Lassa fever endemic region of rural Upper Guinea. Sci Rep 11, 20698 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00113-z

Delamou A, Douno M, Bouédouno P, Millimono S, Barry TH, Tripathi V, and Diallo M (2021). Women's Social Immersion After Obstetric Fistula Repair: An Experiment in Guinea. Front. Glob. Women's Health 2:713350. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34816239/

Wood, R., Bangura, U., Mariën, J., Douno, M., and Fichet-Calvet, E. (2021). Detection of Lassa virus in wild rodent feces: implications for the burden of Lassa fever in households in the endemic Faranah region, Guinea. One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 13, 100317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100317  

Douno M, Asampong E, Magassouba N, Fichet-Calvet E, Almudena MS (2021). Hunting and consumption of rodents by children in the Lassa fever endemic area in Faranah, Guinea. PLoS negl trop dis 15(3) : e0009212. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009212