HCRI external affiliates

Our extended team members include affiliates based in other schools and faculties of The University of Manchester, as well as alumni staff and honorary professors and research fellows.

One of our strengths has always been the large number of partners, collaborators and contacts who provide advice and support to our activities. Our multidisciplinary global network of academics and practitioners brings specialist knowledge and understanding of their geographical location to our research partnerships, and we support the exchange of ideas through seminars and workshops. We have developed robust, mutually beneficial relationships with experts both inside and outside of The University of Manchester.

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  Julie-Marie Strange - Professor of Modern British History, Durham University

  View research profile

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  Michael Barnett - Professor of International Affairs and Political Science, The George Washington University

  View research profile

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  Helene Juillard - Lecturer in Cash and Market Based Programming in Crisis Settings

  Helene is a lecturer with Science Po on humanitarian project design and with HCRI since 2019 autumn semester. She has been working as an evaluator in the humanitarian sector for the past decade, with a focus on cash and market-based programming. Helene is interested in how needs are assessed from an agency centric perspective at the detriment of the demand for certain products and services.

  Email Helene Juillard

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  Fabrice Weissman - Director of studies at Crash / Médecins sans Frontières

  Director of studies at Crash / Médecins sans Frontières, Fabrice Weissman joined MSF in 1995. He spent several years in the field as logistician and head of mission in conflict settings, mostly in Africa. He has published several articles and books on humanitarian action including Humanitarian negotiations Revealed, the MSF experience (London: Hurst and Co, 2011). And Saving Lives and Staying Alive. Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management (London: Hurst and Co, 2016). He is currently based in Malawi, working for Crash and coordinating MSF emergency responses.

  View research profile

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  Hassaan Afzal - Emergency Medicine Doctor

  Hassaan Afzal is an Emergency Medicine doctor working in the North West. He completed his masters in International Public Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is working on our Attacks on Healthcare file, a WHO collaborating project. His research interests lie in understanding the impacts of attacks on healthcare in complex emergencies and what can be done to reduce the risk of attacks.

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  Mark Duffield - Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol

  Mark's anthropology PhD was completed among Sudan's Hausa speaking communities. His early academic work focused on labour migration, culminating in a study of the Indian shop floor movement in the UK's Black Country iron foundries. Outside of academia, he was Oxfam's Country Representative in Sudan. Mark has subsequently advised some governments, multilateral organisations, UN agencies and NGOs on conflict related humanitarian issues. His books include Security and Unending War: Governing the World of People and Post-Humanitarianism: Governing Precarity in the Digital World.

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  Jessica Field - Independent Researcher

  Jessica is an interdisciplinary historian interested in exploring power, marginality and resistance across different crisis contexts. She completed her PhD at HCRI in 2015 and has since held a post-doc at Save the Children and lectureships at UCL, Brunel University London, and O.P. Jindal Global University.

  Her academic work focuses on humanitarian effectiveness, refugee protection, and research ethics. She has written extensively on India's failures to protect Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar. Outside academia, Jessica is interested in histories of housing insecurity, evictions and tenant activism.

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  Michael Neuman - Director of Studies at Crash / MSF

  Michaël is director of studies at Crash / MSF, having graduated in Contemporary History and International Relations (Paris-I). He joined MSF in 1999 and has worked both on the ground (Balkans, Sudan, Caucasus, West Africa) and in headquarters (New York, Paris as deputy director responsible for programmes).

  He has carried out research on immigration and geopolitics. He is co-editor of "Humanitarian negotiations Revealed, the MSF experience" (Hurst and Co, 2011) and "Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" (Hurst and Co, 2016)

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  Helen Underhill - Head of Educational Research and Delivery at Kindling

  A non-profit research organisation focusing on reducing the impacts of fire in humanitarian and development settings.

  Previously a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and The University of Manchester (GDI), she has experience designing and delivering postgraduate taught and research courses in E/education, International Development, Humanitarianism and Research Methods.

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  Saumya Kumar - Assistant Professor at the Jamsetji Tata School of Disaster Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

  With a BBA, LLB (Honours) from National Law University, Jodhpur, and an LLM in International & Comparative Law from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, Saumya works on policy analysis and research on disaster governance. She was awarded a fellowship by the Association of Commonwealth Universities for the Commonwealth Futures climate research programme.

  She focuses on disaster policies, transboundary disasters, and international humanitarian law and is currently pursuing a PhD in pathways to just recovery for climate change adaptation in India.