Nicola Desmond
Countries of Expertise
Specialties
- Addiction/Drugs/Drug Policy
- Climate-Related Issues
- Coercive Population Control
- Document Authentication
- Ethnic Discrimination/Persecution
- FGM/FGC
- Forced Marriage
- Gender-Based Violence (GBV)/Domestic Violence/Family Violence
- Healthcare Access/Health Systems Capacity
- HIV/AIDS
- Land Tenure Dispute
- LGBTQ
- Likelihood Of Destitution/Homelessness
- Mental Illness
- Political Persecution
- Religious Discrimination/Persecution
- Risk Of Retaliation
- Sexual Abuse/Assault
- Specialized Medical Services
- Tribal Discrimination/Persecution
About Nicola Desmond
I am a social and medical anthropologist who has worked in the field of global health for over 25 years. I lived in Eastern and Southern Africa for 22 years, where I worked with government and other institutions including NGOs, the National Institute for Health Research (Tanzania), the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Research Programme (Malawi). I have extensive experience of social and health related research and fieldwork in rural and urban communities. I have conducted fieldwork in medical anthropology on social and health risks including on treatment seeking, disease interpretation, traditional religio-cultural beliefs, social networks, social status (reputation), social position, stigma and discrimination.
I am a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Global Research Professor based within the Department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). I have a portfolio of research across geographies and diseases with a primary focus on sub-Saharan Africa and am strongly committed to supporting capacity strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa. I hold a number of external positions including on funding panels and the World Health Organisation (WHO) HIV self-testing Steering Advisory Group and Technical Working Group for HIV self-testing guidelines and the UNAIDS Behavioural Prevention Task Force Committee for targeted risk reduction interventions. I am an external expert for the Institut Pasteur (France), the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (UK) and the Kamuzu College of Health Sciences Ethics Committee (Malawi), an external examiner for University College London (UCL) Institute of Global Health (IGH) MSc Global Health programme and a Commonwealth Scholarship Commission Adviser (UK). I am a senior advisor for the Global Health Bioethics Network (GHBN), Wellcome Trust (UK), was a member of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) ethics committee (UK) and led the Athena Swan Gender Equity agenda at LSTM (UK). I sit on Malawi Ministry of Health Technical Working Groups for HIV Prevention and Key Populations and was an invited member of the WHO Key Populations and Innovative Prevention Expert Review Committee (Global).
