Dr. Carla Rodrigues is a social scientist with a background in medical sociology and anthropology. She is a researcher in the department of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and an honorary research associate at Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol.

Over the past two decades, Carla has worked on a wide range of social science, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and intervention projects on infectious disease prevention and management (including malaria and diarrheal diseases); on pharmaceuticalisation and the social lives of medicines and food/dietary supplements; on self-care, healthcare interactions and therapeutic trajectories; and on the social dimensions of antimicrobial resistance. Across these topics, her work explores and contextualises social dynamics, practices, interactions, meanings and different modes of reasoning around health, risk, uncertainty, and trust.

For her PhD in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam (anthropology department), Carla conducted community-based research in Maputo, Mozambique, on the social embeddedness of everyday medication use, including antibiotics, with a particular focus on pharmaceuticalisation and trusting processes.

Her current research focuses on the microbiome, human-microbial relationships and care in early life. She also serves as co-principal investigator on a collaborative, seed-funded project on antibiotic use and vaccine trial effects in Ghana, and as a researcher in a scoping study on implementation research for self-care interventions in sexual and reproductive health and rights in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Morocco and Zambia.

Carla has been actively involved in academic initiatives, scientific committees and advisory boards aimed at studying and addressing antibiotic use and the social dimensions of antimicrobial resistance. She is a directorate member of the Research Priority Area – Personal Microbiome Health and a board member of the Centre for Social Science and Global Health at the University of Amsterdam.