Personal profiles for the affiliate site.
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, is director of the Harvard FXB Center and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health. As associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, she is a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Prior to her current appointment in 2010, Dr. Leaning served for five years as co-director of the…
Arlan Fuller is executive director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health. His central areas of focus are in human rights law, international development, and US government operations and legislative strategy. He has led several research investigations focused on human rights and complex emergency response, as well as conducted field projects in both health…
Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MsC, is Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is director of research at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She received a first class honors degree and an MSc from…
Hector Lucero is FXB’s Associate Director of Finance and Administration. Working closely with faculty, staff, and Center leadership, he provides oversight and leadership in the financial and administrative management of the Center’s diverse activities. Hector received bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees from Boston University in 2003 and has been with Harvard University since 2008.
Dr. Satchit Balsari is a research fellow at Harvard FXB, where his research has contributed to advocacy on behalf vulnerable populations affected by disasters and humanitarian crises, including children in Haiti, refugees in Jordan, and the Rohingya in Bangladesh. Until recently, he served as Director of the Global Emergency Medicine Program at Weill Cornell Medical College/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; in the summer of 2017, Dr Balsari will join the faculty of emergency…
Dr. Carmel Williams is the executive editor of Health and Human Rights, Harvard FXB Center’s flagship publication. She has held this position since 2011. Dr. Williams holds a PhD in community health. Her thesis, which arose from her work in development, was on operationalizing the right to health in aid-funded programs. She was the executive director of a New Zealand-based health NGO for eight years and holds research fellowships at…
Vasileia Digidiki is a social and forensic psychologist and a Harvard Instructor. She earned her PhD in social psychology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and holds two master’s degrees, one in forensic psychology and one in social psychology. Digidiki joined the FXB Center in 2014, where she completed her post-doc on child protection challenges in humanitarian crises. She leads the Center’s research on refugee and migrant child protection in…
Margareta (Magda) Matache is a Roma rights activist from Romania, director of the Roma Program at Harvard FXB, and also a Harvard instructor. In 2012 she was awarded a Hauser postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard FXB and founded the Roma Program here at that time. In April 2017, she shepherded Culture Beyond Borders: The Roma Contribution, FXB’s very successful fifth annual event to mark International Roma Day. The University of Pennyslvania…
Elizabeth D. Gibbons is a senior fellow and visiting scientist at Harvard FXB Center and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance at St. Edwards University. Prior to these appointments Gibbons enjoyed a lengthy career in the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), where she served most recently as deputy director of policy and practice and associate director of gender, rights and civic engagement in…
Benjamin Leaman communicates through writing, editing, design, photography, and videography on behalf of the center. He provides marketing and communications strategy to the diverse team of fellows and faculty. He obtained an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University.
Elizabeth Donger is a research associate at Harvard FXB focusing on issues of distress migration and child protection. She is the project lead for several studies including evaluations for the UNHCR in Ecuador and in Zambia of the health and well-being of adolescent refugees living in urban environments; and an evaluation of the community-level harm prevention strategies of three children’s rights nonprofits in India. She has experience in nonprofit programming,…
Susan Lloyd McGarry writes and edits program reports, policy briefs, case studies, and various other documents for publication and use in e-learning formats as part of advancing Harvard FXB Center’s work in the world. She has helped prepare several center faculty books for publication, including the forthcoming “Realizing Roma Rights,” Human Rights and Adolescence, and Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age. McGarry has also edited a policy…
Myriam is responsible for the design and implementation of the FXB Field Education Internship program for Harvard University students to expand their knowledge and field experience in community development, health, and human rights for impoverished and marginalized populations, and to contribute to agency’s program capacity building, advocacy, and public policy. She also builds education, training, and research connections between FXB and other countries and universities abroad. A native of France, Myriam…
Fun Lau joined the FXB Center after four years at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard in FAS where she provided Financial support to the Center’s faculty and staff. She will be working closely with the Finance and Admin team, leading the Center’s Accounts Payable and Receivables operations as well as working on broader Center and project finance activities as well as helping to coordinate the Center’s administration. Fun…
Lena Ransohoff recently graduated from Cornell University and joined FXB to work as the Faculty Assistant under Dr. Jennifer Leaning and Professor Jacqueline Bhabha. With research interests in global health, medical anthropology, and human rights, she hopes to provide administrative support to the Center’s faculty and fellows while learning from their work.
Ariana Marnicio, MPH, conducts research on healthcare for Syrian refugees and works on Professor Leaning’s team assessing the health impact of the war in Syria. She earned her Master of Public Health in Global Health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and her BA in Arabic from Georgetown University. Prior to her work at FXB, Marnicio worked as an analyst at the Baker Institute for Public…
Miriam Chernoff, MA, PhD, grew up in northern California and now lives in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is a statistician and an archaeologist/anthropologist who currently works as a biostatistician. She is interested in Near Eastern agricultural history and has contributed statistical expertise in the fields of HIV/AIDS, refugee mental health, psychology, minority health, and arthritis. Miriam loves to learn and has taken advantage of the Boston area, rich in educational resources,…
Rebecca Shin is the Program Coordinator at Harvard FXB where she contributes to program development and operations. After completing her MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School, Shin joined the Harvard FXB Center to directly pursue her passion for the human rights space. Her areas of focus include child protection programs as well as key strategic initiatives with the Executive Director. Prior to attending HKS, she worked for over 20 years…
Ranya is a Research Fellow at FXB and an Information Management Officer at the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) Foundation. Her work at FXB is primarily focused on providing analytics and visualizations for the Lancet Commission on Syria report. She is committed to conducting applied research in order to improve NGO ground operations, including her recent effort to digitize and standardize SAMS’ data collection and storage. She has a PhD…
Siddharth Kara is a visiting scientist and fellow on forced labor with Harvard FXB Center and a fellow with the Carr Center Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. He is recognized as an expert on contemporary slavery and is best known for his award-winning book, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, the first of three books he is writing on the subjects of human trafficking and contemporary…
Mihir Bhatt directs the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, which he founded in 1989. AIDMI began as a three-person team and has grown to a staff of 83 working in 11 activity centers. He is a member of the managing committee for the mumbaiVOICES project, a grassroots effort to record and discuss the Mumbai train bombing of July 11, 2006, and the response to that emergency (http://www.mumbaivoices.com). Bhatt has pushed for…
Professor Emily Y. Y. Chan is director of the Collaborating Centre at Oxford University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response, director of the Centre of Global Health, convener of the Climate Change and Health Study Group, and a member of the faculty of medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Apart from being a public health research expert, she is also an…
Anne Stetson, MA, JD, is the president of Lighthouse Global Consulting, a strategic consulting firm advising foundations, nonprofit organizations, and investment firms working around the world to advance social and environmental sustainability. Prior to establishing her firm, she worked with the Americas Program of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), and practiced international corporate and investment law for 10 years in New York and in Boston.…
Dr. Hilarie Cranmer, attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, received her MD from Washington University School of Medicine. At the Harvard School of Public Health, Cranmer received a Master’s in Public Health. She completed her residency in emergency medicine with Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program (HAEMR) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MGH. She completed her fellowship in International Emergency Medicine and Health…
Dr. Chris Desmond is a chief research specialist in the HIV/AIDS, STIs and TB (HAST) research program for the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria, South Africa. He holds an MCom in economics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly the University of Natal), and obtained a PhD in development studies from the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. Previously, he was a research specialist at Harvard FXB…
Dr. Gregg Greenough has worked extensively in applying epidemiologic methods to public health problems within conflict and disaster-affected populations. After graduating from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, he completed a residency and fellowship in emergency medicine at UCLA and earned an MPH at Johns Hopkins University. He held joint faculty positions in emergency medicine and international health at Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine and Public Health…
Dr. Bartels is an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her international work has included HIV/AIDS programmatic work in Kenya, working with Burundian refugees in Tanzania, and helping to develop an early warning drought surveillance system in Ethiopia. Dr. Bartels has also helped manage a cholera outbreak in central Ethiopia and participated in the International Rescue Committee’s nationwide mortality study in the Democratic Republic…
Dr. Michael Lappi has extensive experience in the field of humanitarian relief and disaster medicine having served throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. In 2005, Lappi led the first ever American Red Cross Public Health Team during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita relief efforts and conducted a comprehensive assessment and analysis of over 200 shelters and nearly 25,000 evacuees. Most recently, he provided invaluable medical assistance to…
Dr. Sudhir Anand is Professor of Economics at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, and a world-recognized development economist. The author of many books and articles on health economics, human development, and the theory and measurement of economic inequality, he is the lead author of the Cost of Inaction. Anand is distinguished visiting scholar with Harvard FXB and for the past several years has been Visiting Professor of Global Health and…
Sergio Aguayo Is a Professor at the Centro de Estudios Internacionale, El Colegio de México, where he coordinates the Seminar on Violence and Peace and recently published a report investigating two mass killings in Mexico by gangs in the drug trade. The Wilson Quarterly recently published his analysis of the need for the United States and Mexico to join together to fight organized crime, and why it has not happened…
Clay Heaton is a Data Scientist at Imangi Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he develops software and uses advanced analytics and machine learning to provide data-driven insights in support of mobile software that has seen over one billion users. Clay has a background in international health with a focus on data management during the response to complex humanitarian emergencies. He has extensive experience producing focused and actionable analysis for…
Dr. Lara Jirmanus is primary care physician in the Family Medicine Department at the Cambridge Health Alliance. She has been involved in grassroots organizing, advocacy and research for many years, addressing worker and immigrant rights in the US, social movements and infectious diseases in Brazil and the impacts of conflict and displacement in the Middle East. Her current research focuses on the health of Syrian refugees and host populations in Lebanon, as well…
Dr. Steiner is a Harvard FXB Center Senior Fellow and an associate of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She directs the Intercommunal Trust Building Project, which aims to contribute to an improvement in the relationship between Armenian and Turkish communities. More generally, the project seeks to add to understanding of the psychology that propels violence between communities as well as the psychology of healing and building productive relationships post-violence. The project’s…
Dr. Elizabeth H. Shlala works on the historical roots and contemporary impact of modern migration in the Middle East. Her work focuses on law, gender and identity. She recently spent three years as a Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She received a certificate for Session IV of the Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University…
Dr. Lynne Jones is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researcher, and relief worker. Jones has been engaged in assessing mental health needs and establishing and running mental health services in disaster, conflict, and post-conflict settings since 1990 around the world. Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry, her latest book, published in June 2017 by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, explores her experience as a practicing psychiatrist…
Kathleen Hamill, JD, MALD, is a human rights lawyer. She has taught courses on human rights and international law at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, since 2002. During this time she also worked as an independent researcher, advocate, and consultant in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Her recent scholarship and related policy work has focused on promoting and protecting the rights and wellbeing of children as…
Dr. Rose is a chronic disease epidemiologist with interests in psychosocial epidemiology, demography, environmental health, and sustainable development. She has spent over 20 years designing and analyzing data from the US National Health Interview Survey focusing on 1990 Health Objectives, Healthy People 2010, tobacco use, Hispanic health, and advising the Ministries of Health of Hungary, Mexico, and Taiwan on best practices for their health interview surveys. She also was the…
Jessica Stern is a fellow at Harvard FXB, an advanced academic candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis, and a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is also a member of Hoover Institution’s Task Force on National Security and Law. She is the author of Denial: A Memoir of Terror, selected by the Washington Post as a best book…
Tanya Jones, MPA, MA, is a sociologist and policy analyst who studies institutional change and health sector reform in Ghana. A doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley and Thurgood Marshall Fellow at Dartmouth College, Tanya has been engaged in international health as a development practitioner, scholar, and philanthropist throughout her career. Currently, Tanya is president of Aya Global, a philanthropic advisory consulting practice. Formerly, as a portfolio manager at the Barr Foundation, she…
A pediatrician, public health expert, and director of the Palestinian Happy Child Center, Dr. Jumana Odeh is an acknowledged health leader in the Palestinian Occupied Territory. Odeh began her medical service to the Palestinian people in 1981 as a hospital pediatrician at Augusta Victoria Hospital – Jerusalem and as a project manager volunteer for Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, followed by a stint as a team leader at Caritas…
Dr. Elizabeth Newnham is an early career fellow at Harvard FXB Center. Her research examines mental health outcomes for children and adolescents living in chronic adversity, and the development and evaluation of evidence-based interventions in disaster and post-conflict settings. Newnham joined Harvard FXB Center in 2010 as the inaugural American Australian Association Morgan Stanley Pediatrics Fellow. She completed her master of psychology (Clinical) and PhD at The University of Western Australia,…
Roger-Claude Liwanga is a visiting scholar with Boston University’s African Studies Center and the co-founder of Promote Congo, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for human rights and alleviating poverty in the Congo. In 2012 Mr. Liwanga worked as a continuing legal education expert for the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, where he designed training modules and trained ABA staff and law professors in North and South Kivu (DRC)…
Dr. Josyann Abisaab is an attending physician in the Emergency Department at the New York Presbyterian Hospital and a faculty member of the Global Emergency Medicine Program at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her areas of interest include global health, complex humanitarian emergencies and refugee protection. She has conducted human rights research and advocacy in the Middle East and, in 2014, joined a team of Harvard FXB researchers on a rapid…
Dr. Jay Lemery is an assistant professor at the Weill Cornell Medical College and has an interest in the effects of environmental change on health and human rights. He is the director of Cornell Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, a university-wide collaboration promoting education, research, and training in unpredictable and austere environments. He serves as a member of the Global Health Steering Committee at Weill Cornell. Lemery is a consultant to…
Richard Sollom is Senior Results-Based Management Officer with the UN Refugee Agency where he provides strategic guidance to field operations to improve the protection of forcibly displaced populations. He is also Senior Fellow and Visiting Scientist at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Sollom has more than 20 years of experience working with both inter- and non-governmental organizations in the human rights and humanitarian fields. Prior to UNHCR,…
Orla Kelly is a doctoral candidate at Boston College. Her interests include the sociology of development, gender, girls’ education, and environmental sociology. Orla worked as a research research associate at the Harvard FXB Center between 2010 and 2015. In this position, Orla was responsible for the center’s gender and adolescence research portfolio in India. In this role she managed a number of research projects relating to gender discrimination, access to…
Eric Reeves has spent the past eighteen years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. His work appears in academic journals as well as prominent news outlets. He has testified several times before the Congress, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan. He is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical…
