UNAIDS Team Representative

Kent is a policy analyst who taught at Yale University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has co-authored/edited 5 books and over 100 articles, including on gender and global health. He has worked for a range of institutions in numerous countries spanning Africa, Asia, North America and the Pacific. Kent is a champion for social justice, human rights and the democratization of opportunity for all. He loves to cook and is Chief of Strategic Policy Directions at UNAIDS, where he also provides support to GH5050.

Researcher

Mireille has previously worked for UNAIDS, WHO and Cancer Research UK where she focussed on areas including women, child and adolescent health and the right to health. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Here, Mireille was actively involved in gender equality both within the university, helping to run sexual harassment training for new students, and beyond, through involvement with Amnesty International and UNICEF campaigns.  

Co-Founder and Director

Sarah Hawkes is a medical doctor with a degree in sociology and a PhD in epidemiology. She is Director of the Centre for Gender and Global Health and Professor of Global Public Health at University College London where she leads a research theme analyzing the use of evidence in policy processes, particularly in relation to gender and health, and sexual health. She has lived and worked for much of the past 20 years in Asia, where she has gathered evidence, built capacity and helped develop policy for programmes focusing on gender, sexual health and human rights. She works closely with national governments, research organizations, WHO and UNFPA in Asia and the Middle East.

Researcher

Ruth Lawlor is a PhD candidate in history at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on conflict-related sexual violence and is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Cambridge Trust, and the Robert Gardiner Memorial Fund. She is an editor at U.S. Studies Online, the postgraduate journal of the British Association for American Studies.

Researcher

Programme Manager

Anna works in the UCL Institute for Global Health and is part of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health working on gender, NCDs and public engagement. She holds an MSc in Anthropology and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and an BA in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Prior to this, she spent time working for UNAIDS in Geneva and as a Community Outreach Volunteer at Positive East, a community-based HIV charity in London.

Researcher

Dr Geordan Shannon is a feminist, medical doctor, and global health academic. She is based at the UCL Institute for Global Health, Centre for Gender and Global Health and Centre for Global Health Economics, where she leads research in health systems innovation, gender-based violence prevention, participatory research, public engagement, and health economics. She has worked in various settings, including remote Indigenous Australia, post-Tsunami Sri Lanka, the Peruvian Amazon, Western Kenya and rural Sierra Leone. Geordan is the co-founder of Global Health Disrupted (www.globalhealthdisrupted.org), a grassroots network supporting creative approaches to improving health and strengthening communities around the world. Geordan is also co-founder of STEMA, a research initiative using a systems and design thinking approach to address broader systems failures in achieving human health and wellbeing in low resource settings worldwide. She was recently awarded Young Australian of the Year in the UK in recognition of her contributions to global health.

Researcher

Researcher

Dr. Zahra Zeinali is an Iranian medical doctor who has pursued further training in global health at Johns Hopkins University. She is a graduate research assistant at Johns Hopkins, conducting research on intersectionality and health systems' leadership and an active member of the Junior Doctors Network of the World Medical Association and contributes to the Gender Equity and Youth hubs of the Global Health Workforce Network. She has previously worked with EAT, Jhpiego, and the Global Health Workforce Network at the World Health Organization. She co-founded the Iranian Medical Students’ Association as a medical student and has more than 8 years of experience in a leadership capacity with the International Federation of Medical Students´ Associations, where she served as the Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region 2014/15. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications, blogs and opinion pieces about global health and has a book chapter under completion. She is passionate about gender and health equity as means to achieve social justice and prosperity for all.