Ms Nompumelelo Gumede
IAS Annual Theme: Gestation
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Nompumelelo ‘Mpume’ Gumede is a participatory health communication for development scholar at the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research interests are in Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC), with a special focus on bottom-up approaches to Health Communication.
She has worked extensively in the field of HIV prevention and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) on a range of qualitative studies in more than 10 countries on the African continent. Her more recent work includes exploring Meaningful Youth Participation (MYP) with Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) in a youth-led HIV prevention programme in South Africa, using art-based participatory research methodologies to co-design SRHR programmes with AGYW.
Her Master’s degree research project explored parent-child sexuality communication with rural and urban parents in a South African context, foregrounding culture-centred approaches to health communication from a decolonial, critical theory perspective. Her PhD research project explores community perceptions of COVID-19 communication in rural, township and informal settlement areas in South Africa, locating culture as central to the development of locally relevant health communication, through the theoretical lens of the PEN-3 Cultural Model.
During their IAS Fellowship, Ms Gumede is collaborating with Dr Pandora Syperek from Loughborough University London.