The PhD Diaries: Marina Schenkel & the Dermot McAleese Teaching Assistant Awards

Policy Choices and Health Behaviour

Early last week in June 2024, I experienced a sore throat and developed a fever. The first thing that came to mind was testing for COVID-19 and wearing a mask. I wondered if I was eligible for a booster vaccine. These measures have only entered our vocabulary in the past few years, yet they have dictated our personal and political lives for a time. Although these, and many other measures are policies largely products of scientific consensus and recommended by experts and public health authorities, they have pierced the sphere of political decisions. My current research interest is precisely amid the overlap between policy choices and health behaviour:  Why did some governments implement such policies, while others decided not to follow guidelines designed to curb the spread of a deadly disease? Why did some people vehemently oppose wearing a mask or avoiding social gatherings, even taking the streets in demonstrations against governmental decisions backed up by health experts?

Background and COVID-19 crisis

I embarked on these inquiries during my PhD at TCD, a path shaped directly by my previous career choices. I grew up in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, where I studied Public Policy during my undergraduate course and continued my studies through a master’s programme. Governmental policies represented to me a means of changing societal problems, thus it made sense that the state should opt for well-prepared professionals that would more effectively address the needs of taxpayers.  Public universities like the one I attended are known for impactful research while also severely lacking infrastructure. Third-level education is one of the main forms of social mobility in Brazil, in the hope of reducing dramatic inequalities, similar to other countries in the Global South. The university environment along with some political involvement and activism during those years opened my eyes to the role of injustice, privileges, and colonialism, making me realise that the state and policymaking were more complex than I had previously imagined.

I was working for a couple of years as a public policy analyst at the state health department when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Most of the public sector employees I knew were constantly working long hours to deliver as much as possible given the generalised under-funding that was happening in my state and more broadly in the country, especially in the public health sector. The Brazilian president at the time became well-known globally for mishandling the COVID crisis: loudly undermining the efficacy of vaccines and claiming that dealing with the rise of the death toll was not his job. What struck me then, at the local level close to my daily functions, was that those making the most crucial policy decisions often didn't care about (or perhaps even understand) the scientific evidence about the crisis. Political manoeuvres and incompetence frequently prevailed, especially when facing urgent demands. New healthcare facilities were built in questionable locations. I witnessed decision-makers using overly simplistic calculations to justify that expanding hospital bed capacity was unnecessary. The old governance patterns marked by patrimonialism were now met with the denial of the latest recommendations by experts in the field.

Political Science, Democracy and Development

For these and other reasons related to the lack of a future in my public sector position, I wanted to study abroad and pursue an academic career. By that time, I had some experience teaching public health that was very positive. I came to Ireland and completed a master’s in social data science, focused on obtaining more training and tools that could be applied to my research while getting more used to the language. After that, fortunately, I found a good match for a supervisor at the Political Science department interested in both the methods and topics I proposed as my project, centred around the Brazilian and American cases. During the PhD, I had the opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant for the undergrad course Democracy and Development. There I could tap into alternative perspectives to the Eurocentric views often prevalent in political science, drawing on my background from Latin America. Engaging directly with students in discussions on these themes was incredibly rewarding. The lecturer’s support in integrating my inputs into the course syllabus and tutorial approaches was essential and greatly aligned with my academic interests.

I am still figuring out how to answer my questions on the COVID-19 policy responses. Looking deeply into the literature and preliminary findings so far allows me to confidently say that attributing the failure to address the COVID crisis to populism is not enough. Also, calling people who disagreed with health policies conspiracy theorists does not help. In my final PhD year, I’m using machine learning techniques to analyse political communication from leaders in Brazil and the US on social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I am also running an online experiment in these countries to attempt to disentangle which type of policies people are more likely to reject based on their levels of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism. Hopefully, then, I will have a clearer picture of what’s going on.

Pictured are three of the award winners with Dermot McAleese.