Academic staff

Omer is a transdisciplinary scholar of disaster and conflict, interested in how people imagine and claim their worlds in the wake of colonial rule and environmental ruin while in the shadows of empire. Questioning disciplinary norms within disaster studies and the carceral logics of South Asia, he explores these ideas in the mountain borderlands of the disputed territory of Kashmir and its continuity with Northern Pakistan. Omer works alongside international development, humanitarian, and human rights organizations, linking research with policy, practice, and activism.

Sabah is an interdisciplinary global health researcher committed to social justice. Her research topics include preparedness and response to public health emergencies, labour exploitation and migrant workers' health, and palliative care. She was a postdoctoral researcher at King's College London in global health palliative care within R4HC-MENA. She co-founded organisations aiming at empowering and supporting women and 'minorities' in science and academia and is a trustee for an NGO in global health and development.

Lia is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow exploring histories of sexual violence, exploitation and abuse involving humanitarian actors during conflicts of decolonisation. She received her PhD from the EUI and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and visiting NEH-fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Her broad research interests are in the intertwined histories of international law, imperialism and humanitarian action.

Antoine Burgard is a lecturer in history of humanitarianism. He holds a PhD from Université Lyon 2 and Université du Québec A Montréal. Previously a postdoctoral fellow of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris and the Fondation Claude Levy in Strasbourg, he is developing a new project on age and border policing ('Who is a child? Determining age in British and French border policing, 1918 to the present'). His research and supervision interests broadly include children and young people in situations of conflict and displacement, history of migration, and genocides.

Maria is a post-doctoral research associate on the Wellcome-funded project ‘Developing Humanitarian Medicine’. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Galway. Adopting a comparative approach, her thesis examined how socio-political backgrounds impacted Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam’s interpretations of ethical humanitarian action in the 1980s. She is interested in the history of humanitarian medicine, along with the tensions that arise between neutrality, solidarity and human rights in humanitarian interventions.

Nimesh's research concerns the interplay between disasters, development and democratic politics with a particular attention to the possibilities and challenges facing participatory and accountability initiatives in disaster contexts. He is currently examining the role of youth led activism in constructing alternative narratives of care, accountability and justice for labour migrants impacted by the Covid19 pandemic in Nepal. His PhD research (from LSE) used ethnographic and interview data to examine the politics of citizen centric governance following the 2015 Nepal earthquakes.

Ayham holds a PhD in business and management, MSc in management for business excellence, and BSc in agriculture engineering. In his PhD project, he supported two UK case studies in evaluating and overcoming the operational challenges associated with engaging spontaneous volunteers during emergencies. Ayham has diverse experience including quality management, HR, and change management in the non-for-profit and commercial sector.

Jessica's teaching centres on histories of humanitarianism and war and conflict with a focus on displacement. Her current research interests lie in the historical sociology of camp formation. This traces the concepts and themes which underpin modern forms of incarceration such as refugee camps and linkages to the camps of the past. She is also interested in the pedagogy of humanitarianism examining how we teach difficult subjects related to violence conflict and displacement. In particular she's researching the value of student research visits to conflict affected societies.

Kirsten undertook her role in HCRI in January 2014. Prior to this, she was a Teaching Fellow in International Development at the Global Development at the University of Manchester. Kirsten completed her PhD in 2012, analysing the causes of post-war violence and crime in El Salvador. Her current research builds on from her PhD by examining urban violence and its humanitarian consequences.

Rubina's areas of interest are anthropology of violence and reconstruction, medical anthropology with a special focus on social suffering and mental illness, and the study of lived Islam in South Asia and the UK. Her doctoral work examined moral and material 'reconstruction' of life after an episode of ethnic violence in Gujarat, Western India in 2002.

Luke is a Research Associate at HCRI working on the Evidence and Knowledge for Development (K4D) programme. He received a PhD in history in 2013 from the University of Manchester, where he later worked as a research associate and lecturer. He has published research on the history of British humanitarianism.

Dr. Luis A. Martinez-Juarez is a global health expert and physician with over a decade of experience in public health leadership, specializing in health equity and humanitarian response. He holds a DrPH from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and an MPH from the University of Liverpool. Currently a Research Affiliate at The Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and a Lecturer at the University of Manchester, he is also the Honorary Director of the Global Health Chapter of the Mexican Society of Public Health. Dr. Martinez-Juarez has co-founded the Global Health Program at Universidad Anáhuac, contributed to international health strategies, including COVID-19 response efforts, and represented civil society at the United Nations. His extensive publication record focuses on health equity, COVID-19, and global health policy.

Amanda has an MSc in Education from Hofstra University (2007), an MA in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response (2011) and a PhD (2018) in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from HCRI at The University of Manchester. Amanda has worked with HCRI throughout her PhD as a tutor across modules and has now joined as a Lecturer in Global Health. Her research focuses on education and humanitarianism. Her interests also include global health, disaster response and the history of humanitarianism.

Previously, Patrick was an Assistant Professor in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at SOAS University of London. His research explores the political economy of violence, conflict, and development, primarily focusing on Southeast Asia, specifically Myanmar’s borderlands with China, India, and Thailand. He has also conducted work for the UK Government, the World Bank, The Asia Foundation, UNRISD, Conciliation Resources, and NIS, focusing on conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Nat's research concerns how technological innovation affects security practices. His past research examined the development of risk governance and information-sharing protocols in UK emergency response. He is currently probing a new emergency infrastructure that's accruing with government emphasis on smart technologies. For Nat, these technologies and practices are important for understanding how security operates in our time; showing as they do how global futures are imagined, how governments consider the wider environment around them and how we as citizens figure as subjects of power.

Sophie holds a Presidential Academic Fellowship in Medical Humanitarianism. She joined HCRI in October 2018, after completing a PhD and a post-doc at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on local medical humanitarian initiatives, where she studies grassroots organisation of medical efforts and attacks on local medical staff and infrastructure. She has specifically looked at the case studies of Egypt, Syria, and Ukraine.

Duncan Shaw is a Professor of Operations and Critical Systems and the Head of the Management Science Group in Alliance Manchester Business School. Duncan's main research interests include Operational Research (OR) and methods to analyse and improve decision making in organisations, such as developing and evaluating new methods to structure complex, socially constructed problems and building stakeholder commitment to implementing change initiatives.

Pedro is a social anthropologist with a research focus on armed violence, humanitarianism, risk, and the state in Brazil. His current project investigates conceptions of normality in relation to gun violence among local state actors and citizens in Greater Rio, through long-term ethnographic research of a program created by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He has also conducted research for MSF and is the convener of EASA's Anthropology of Humanitarianism Network (AHN).

Kristina's focus is on both academic and policy-oriented research, specializing in understanding how interventions shape and are shaped by local contexts, particularly within the realm of everyday economic interactions. She draws on prior research experience with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Food Programme (WFP), Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). Her PhD explores the implications of humanitarian cash and voucher assistance on host-refugee relations in Lebanon.