• To document the perspectives of staff employed by the UK and Sierra Leonean armed forces and the Sierra Leonean police, focusing on their reflections of the merits or otherwise of militarising humanitarian assistance during the Ebola outbreak
• To document perspectives of staff employed by the Sierra Leonean Ministry of Health and Sanitation about the issues and challenges of containing Ebola, focusing on their relationships with national and international armed forces, chieftain authorities and relations at a village level.
• To document how relationships between different kinds of public authority (including clans, customary leaders, official and unofficial burial teams, informal groupings of young people, vigilante groups, staff from iNGOs) shaped ‘local’ responses to endeavours to contain and treat Ebola.
• To document the legacies of militarised humanitarian assistance
• To reflect critically on the findings with the intention of fostering processes of accountability among humanitarian agencies

Militarising humanitarian assistance provoked strong reactions, especially among scholars who had become highly critical of the militarised humanitariansm in war affected regions since the early 1990s. They argued that militarised enforcement would again end up being counter-productive. Others, however, took the view that militarisation was regrettable, but necessary.

Given the passions aroused, it is surprising that, in general, post-mortems on what happened during the Ebola epidemic are rather muted. Claims are heard, mostly from people associated with governments and the armed forces, that militarisation was a success. Others have implied, or stated outright, that the military role was marginal or perhaps even hindered control efforts. The basic problem is that empirical data informing these debates are limited, and it is far from clear what actually occurred. It might be supposed that local forms of public authority were dramatically altered, but if so, little or nothing is known of the consequences, or what this might mean for future outbreaks.

The proposed research will help to fill these lacunae. It builds on recently completed fieldwork exploring the logics of care and resistance to official endeavours by national and international agencies to contain Ebola in Ribbi chiefdom, Moyamba district (Parker et al, in press). By reflecting on social relationships between formal, hybrid and informal authorities (such as secret societies), our research will address how a morally appropriate form of people’s science emerged under the radar of external scrutiny, including that of a Paramount Chief and the Sierra Leonean armed forces. It is anticipated that further research in other parts of Moyamba district, neighbouring Port Loko and Western Area Rural districts, for instance, will reveal different kinds of responses, thereby shedding light on how public authorities, including national and international armed forces, shaped the Ebola outbreak.