Professor Melissa Parker

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Melissa’s research interests include anthropology of global health policies and medical humanitarianism, pandemic preparedness (local and global concepts), research capacity building to support preparedness.

In 2014, Melissa established the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform with collagues from Sierra Leone and the UK. Melissa also contributed to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours and the ethnicity subgroup of SAGE in 2020 and 2021.

Dr Syed Abbas

Institute of Development Studies

Syed is a physician and public health researcher with more than 10 years’ experience of working on zoonotic disease policies in South Asia.

Syed is a research fellow interested in understanding the dynamics involved in multisector collaborations, both in research and practice. He has worked in both India case states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

Professor Christos Lynteris

University of St Andrews

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics with a particular focus on zoonotic diseases, epidemiological epistemology, visual medical culture, and colonial medicine.

 Focusing on diseases that spread between animals and humans, his research has been foundational in the establishment of the anthropological study of zoonosis. 

Professor Alice Street

University of Edinburgh

Alice has published widely on the anthropology of global health interventions, medical institutions and medical innovation and is the author of the academic monograph Biomedicine in an Unstable Place: Infrastructure and Personhood in a Papua New Guinea Hospital, published by Duke University Press. She is the Principal Investigator of DiaDev, a six year research programme to investigate the design and use of diagnostic devices in global health, funded by the European Research Council.  

Professor Melissa Leach

University of Cambridge

Melissa Leach is the Executive Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. Previously, she was the Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She co-founded and co-directed the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre from 2006 to 2014, with its pioneering pathways approach to innovation, sustainability and development issues. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded a CBE in 2017 for services to social science.

A social anthropologist and geographer, her interdisciplinary, policy-engaged research in Africa and beyond links environment, agriculture, health, technology and gender, with particular interests in knowledge, power and the politics of science and policy processes, and pandemic preparedness and response.

Melissa will be joining the meeting via hybrid attendance.

Dr Stephanie Switzer

University of Strathclyde

Dr Stephanie Switzer is an academic at the Strathclyde Law School and has expertise in public international law, with a particular interest in global health law. She has collaborated with a number of organisations such as the Scottish Government, the European Commission, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Food and Agriculture Organisation on policy relevant research and consultancies.

Stephanie is a co-investigator in the UKRI funded One Ocean Hub and is also a founding member of the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance. She also co-organised the XVI instalment of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law in 2018 and supervises doctoral projects in her fields of expertise. She is currently the Director of Student Welfare within the Strathclyde Law School. Stephanie is interested in curriculum development and was previously a Member of the Law Society of Scotland’s Education and Training subcommittee. She also played a leading role in the development of Strathclyde’s English Law programmes.

Professor Steven Hinchliffe

University of Exeter

Steve Hinchliffe is a Geographer and Social Scientist with specialisms in science and technology studies, risk, health and human-nonhuman relations.   He has published widely on issues of food, risk, biosecurity, One Health, contagion and nature/cultures. His recent books include the monograph Pathological Lives (Wiley Blackwell), which pioneered a situated approach to human and animal health, the edited volume Humans, Animals and Biopolitics and the monograph Geographies of Nature. 

He is a principal investigator at the Wellcome Trust funded Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (2017-). Steve led the University of Exeter’s Humanities and Social Science interdisciplinary research theme on ‘Science, Technology and Culture’, and currently co-leads with colleagues in Biosciences the University’s Research Network on ‘Microbes and Society’.

Professor James Wood

University of Cambridge

James is the Head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the dynamic processes represented in all infectious diseases, at scales from the cellular and sub-cellular through to the more traditionally studied epidemiological scales of the population and metapopulation. Mathematical modelling and more traditional epidemiological approaches are combined with detailed molecular studies of pathogen and host in a multidisciplinary framework.

All studies of any infection must also consider the ecology of the host as well as of the infection itself and its pathogenesis. I have particular interests in the epidemiological dynamics of various virus infections of humans and other animals, including bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, African horse sickness, canine rabies and emergent lyssavirus and henipavirus infections and the methods needed to study them. James is the thematic lead for One Health and Zoonoses for the network.