PhD Research

My doctoral thesis, "The Social Influence of Vaccine Misinformation and Its Correction on Social Media During a Pandemic" (Warwick Medical School), was supervised by Prof. Ivo Vlaev and Dr Redzo Mujcic, with a doctoral committee including Prof. Nick Chater and Prof. Thomas Hills. It was examined by Dr Robert Kerrison (University of Surrey) and Dr Rachel Spencer (University of Warwick), and passed with minor corrections in April 2026. The work was fully funded by Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Institute for Global Pandemic Planning at Warwick Medical School.

The thesis comprises four pre-registered online experiments conducted on Prolific with UK residents, all using a hypothetical COVID-66 pandemic scenario. Study 1 established that vaccine misinformation reduces vaccination intentions by distorting perceived social norms — both first-order norms (what others intend to do) and second-order norms (what others believe), with approximately 40% of misinformation's effect mediated through these distorted norm perceptions. Study 2 compared user-generated social corrections against algorithmic refutations, showing that the two operate through dissociable channels and that institutional fact-checking labels can maintain baseline intentions where algorithmic refutations without social context do not. Study 3 tested a combined intervention pairing factual debunking with descriptive normative information, demonstrating that the combined approach works better than factual only corrections for the most vaccine hesistant groups. Study 4 then directly compared prebunking + norm against debunking + norm and a norm-only condition, finding that prebunking + norm produced the strongest effect (d = 0.30), debunking + norm closely followed, and normative information alone failed to counter misinformation.

Across the four studies, the thesis advances four main contributions. First, it reframes vaccine misinformation as a social, not purely informational, problem, showing that a substantial share of its effect on vaccine intentions operates through distorted perceptions of what others around us think and intend to do. Second, it demonstrates a mechanism reversal in how corrections work: factual debunking alone operates primarily through the cognitive pathway of belief change, but pairing it with normative information shifts the dominant pathway to a social one — corrections begin to work less by convincing people the claim is false, and more by signalling what their community actually does. Third, it provides the first direct empirical comparison of prebunking + norm versus debunking + norm strategies, addressing a gap in the inoculation and correction literatures about the optimal timing of combined interventions during an infodemic. Fourth, it identifies a boundary condition for social norms theory: in misinformation-rich environments, normative information alone is insufficient — to be durable, it must be paired with a factual correction mechanism. Studies 1 and 2 are published in Behavioural Public Policy and Vaccine; Study 3 is under review at Scientific Reports, and Study 4 is under review at Social Science & Medicine.

REACH-OUT: Vaccine Delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa

As a Research Fellow at Bocconi University (2025–2026), I worked on the EU-funded REACH-OUT project (HORIZON-JU-GH-EDCTP3), applying behavioural science insights to improve vaccine delivery strategies and reduce immunisation gaps among zero-dose children in Kenya, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

Health Financing & Policy in Sierra Leone

I am currently working with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) on a national health financing landscape analysis for Sierra Leone's National Health Financing Dialogue. I also co-authored a study on the association between diet, physical inactivity, and non-communicable diseases among older adults in Sierra Leone, published in BMJ Open.

Algorithmic vs. Social Corrections

Building on my PhD findings, I have a paper submitted to Scientific Reports examining whether algorithmic refutations without social context fail to correct online vaccine misinformation among vaccine-hesitant populations. This work has implications for how social media platforms design their misinformation response systems.

Telemedicine Sustainability

I co-authored a scoping review on the sustainability of telemedicine in outpatient and primary care during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, using the NASSS framework. Published in the Interactive Journal of Medical Research.

Research Themes

Across my work, several themes recur: the power of perceived social norms to shape health behaviour, the limitations of purely informational corrections, the importance of understanding misinformation as a social (not just cognitive) phenomenon, and the potential of behaviourally-informed communication strategies for public health. I am especially interested in the gap between corrected beliefs and actual behavioural change.