The Global Health Studies Speaker Series
With the generous support of the Provost’s Hollister Lecture Fund and the Alumnae of Northwestern University, in spring quarter 2023 Global Health Studies initiated a new annual speaker series to enhance our program’s intellectual community and engage our students with important voices and new research in relevant fields. Each quarter, we invite one to two scholars from other institutions to discuss their work with students, faculty, and other Northwestern community members interested in learning more about global health challenges past and present.
From 2023-2024, our guest speakers have included medical anthropologist Pierre Minn on the work of local clinicians in Haiti; historian Marcos Cueto on the history of Brazil’s impact on global health during the HIV/AIDS pandemic; historian Valentina Parisi on the Rockefeller Foundation’s role in pandemic influenza research and response in the 20th century; Mobile, Alabama-based nurse and community organizer Veda Robbins on interrelated racial and environmental health disparities in the American South (video link here); and public health scholar Yara Asi on war’s devastating impacts on health across history and in the current moment (video link here).
The first speaker for the 2024-2025 speaker series was cultural and medical anthropologist Eugene Raikhel, whose most recent work investigated the mental health crisis amongst university students (video link here).