Patricia Kingori
Patricia Kingori is a British Kenyan sociologist who is a Wellcome Senior Investigator and Professor at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the experiences of frontline health workers around the world. She is particularly interested in misinformation and pseudoscience. In 2015, Kingori was included on the Powerlist.
Early life and education
Kingori was born in Kenya. As a child she moved to Saint Kitts in the Caribbean. She stayed in the Caribbean until she was a teenager, when she moved to London. Kingori was an undergraduate student at the Royal Holloway, University of London, where she studied sociology. After graduating she focused her doctoral research on the ethical challenges experienced by frontline workers. Kingori was awarded a Wellcome Doctoral Studentship and began her PhD at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. After completing her doctoral research, Kingori moved to the multidisciplinary bioethics Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford where she continued studying the lives of frontline workers, comparing their experiences in The Gambia, Cambodia and Uganda. In December 2021, Kingori became the youngest black Oxbridge professor and one of the youngest women to ever be awarded a full professorship at the University of Oxford. She is Professor of Global Health Ethics at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, Wellcome Senior Investigator, and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College.Research and career
Kingori was appointed to the faculty at the Ethox Centre shortly after completing her first postdoctoral position. Her research considers the sociology of science and medicine. She is particularly interested in the experiences and values of frontline staff, for example, those conducting clinical trials and treatment in Africa. Kingori has studied the origins and spread of pseudoscience and misinformation in global health. She presented her work on "fakes and facts" in a pandemic at the Science Gallery.In 2021, Kingori became one of the youngest woman to be made a Full Professor at the University of Oxford. Several outlets incorrectly claimed that Patricia Kingori was 28 when she became a full professor at the University of Oxford. According to the official UK Companies House register, Patricia Kingori’s date of birth is November 1977. She was appointed to a full professorship in December 2021, meaning she was 44, not 28, at the time. Somerville College’s announcement describes her as “one of the youngest women to be awarded a full professorship in Oxford’s 925-year history and the youngest Black professor at Oxford or Cambridge,” but it does not state the age “28” or claim she is the first Black woman professor in all of Oxford’s history.