INTERVIEW
25 and entitlements among rural women. This was followed by binary logistic regressions to determine the association between knowledge of these services, rights and entitlements and the actual utilization of maternal health care among rural women.
E2C: What do you consider the most important policy recommendation of your research?
Civil society-led gender budget initiatives, working in collaboration with other maternal health interventions, should actively target the users of maternal health care. It is not enough to presume that once services are genderresponsive, they will automatically lead to increased utilization among the rural poor.
E2C: You got a ICP“ sandwich”
scholarship from the VLIR. How did you divide your time between Belgium and Uganda?
I spent the first nine months of the PhD taking courses in Europe and returned to Uganda for 11 months, during which I worked briefly( three months) as an intern at the civil society organisation to orient myself with gender budgeting and civil society work in the Ugandan context and collected qualitative data. After 11 months, I returned to Belgium, initially for three months, followed by four months, and finally 11 months to complete the PhD thesis write-up and defence. In total, 24 months of the PhD were spent in Uganda and 27 months were spent in Antwerp.
E2C: How did you experience working and living in both Belgium and Uganda over the past few years?
I enjoyed the experience living and working in both places. Apart from the months in which I collected data from the field, living in Uganda for at least four months each year afforded me the opportunity of maintaining physical contact with my relatives throughout the PhD. The months spent in Belgium enabled me to concentrate on completing data analysis and the write-up of the thesis, as there was less distraction. I was also able to expand my network of friends from both places.
E2C: What was the best, most beautiful moment of your PhD?
The best moment for me was at the end of the pre-defence, when the professors of my jury informed me that I could proceed to publicly defend my thesis, subject to a few changes.
E2C: And what was the worst, most difficult moment?
I would say the most difficult moment was the realisation that my initial research topic could not be feasibly studied in Uganda, which resulted in altering the research question two years towards the end of the PhD. This made the last two years of the PhD draining, as twice the effort needed to be expended to make up for lost time.
E2C: To conclude, can you tell us the most important thing you have learned during your time at IOB?
I have learnt to be an independent researcher and to explore and perfect uncharted methods of evaluation.
Exchange to change January 2017