By: Audrey Raymonda John
The University of Management and Technology (UNIMTECH) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Diana Szántó as an Adjunct Researcher, a strategic addition to the University’s expanding research portfolio in social sciences, public health, and development studies. She will be supervised by Professor Osman Sankoh (MallamO.).
Dr. Szántó is a senior social and cultural anthropologist with over 25 years of international academic and applied research experience across Europe, West Africa, and South America. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Pécs, Hungary, where her doctoral research involved long-term ethnographic fieldwork on polio-related disability and civic agency in Sierra Leone. She also received advanced training in ethnology and applied anthropology from leading French and Hungarian institutions.
Currently a lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Dr. Szántó has also taught undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral courses at Central European University, Semmelweis University, Corvinus University, and the School for International Training (USA). Her scholarly contributions include numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, monographs, including Politicizing Polio in Sierra Leone (2020), as well as several anthropological documentary films.
Dr. Szántó’s extensive research spans disability inclusion, urban anthropology, migration, and public health, notably in Sierra Leone, Hungary, France, and Brazil. She is the founder and president of the Artemisszió Foundation, an applied anthropology NGO promoting intercultural education, social inclusion, migration research, and public health. She has also served as a program coordinator and manager at European institutions focusing on human rights and urban anthropology, and as a consultant to UNFPA, UNDP, and Handicap International in Sierra Leone and Europe.
At UNIMTECH, Dr. Szántó will host the Wenner-Gren Foundation-supported ethnographic research project, Tracing Health Reforms in Sierra Leone. The project examines democratic governance, health system reform, and universal health coverage in post-conflict Sierra Leone, using qualitative and participatory research methods to explore how health policies are shaped, implemented, and experienced, particularly among low-income women and girls within the informal economy.
UNIMTECH warmly welcomes Dr. Szántó and looks forward to the scholarly contributions, mentorship, and international research collaboration she will bring to the University’s academic and research community