Patricia Kingori

Professor Patricia Kingori is a Wellcome Senior Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, a Professor of Global Health Ethics at the University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre and a Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College.

Professor Kingori’s research explores the intersection between the Sociology of Science and Medicine. She has studied the ethical issues experienced by clinical trial fieldworkers, Ebola treatment staff, emergency healthcare professionals, and frontline responders in humanitarian crises. As a health ethicist, Professor Kingori has also advised international organisations including the WHO and the UK government’s SAGE COVID-19 advisory group.

Professor Kingori’s work also seeks to reveal the systemic inequalities persisting in today’s global society. Her Wellcome research project “Fakes, Fabrications and Falsehoods” explores notions of authenticity as a global means of perpetuating privilege, while her “After the End” project investigates who decides when a crisis is over. Her work on the billion dollar “fake essay” industry in which uncredited Kenyan scholars write academic papers for students in the Global North, was the subject of the 2025 film The Shadow Scholars, directed by award-winning filmmaker Eloise King.

In 2021, Professor Kingori made history by becoming the youngest Black woman to receive a full professorship in the history of Oxford and Cambridge universities. Patricia has also been awarded a Merit Award by the University of Oxford in recognition of the standards of academic excellence in her role. In 2015, she was awarded a place on the prestigious Powerlist in recognition of her position as among <1% of Black British female academics employed by an Oxbridge institution.