This is a reminder for our next seminar on Health and Health Systems in the Global Context (HHSGC).
This is an interdisciplinary seminar series which aims to bring together researchers interested in broadening the understanding and tackling some of the most pressing challenges faced by health systems globally. The series provides a forum for interdisciplinary exchange, showcasing theoretical and empirical research, policy analysis, and implementation insights from diverse regional, disciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Speaker: Prof. Rochelle Burgess, Professor of Global Mental Health and Social Justice, Institute for Global Health, University College London
Co-hosted by HCRI and FBMH at University of Manchester
Date: Wednesday, 22 April 2026 14:00 – 15:00, followed by tea, cake and networking
Location: Ellen Wilkinson Building A2.6 - in person encouraged
Topic: Rethinking Global Health: Frameworks of Power
In Rethinking Global Health, Professor Rochelle Burgess reflects on and analyses the working of power in the global health field, with an emphasis on understanding what power produces. In doing so, the book asks the pivotal questions of 'who is global health for?' and 'what is it that limits our ability to meet people where they are? In this public lecture, Professor Burgess will reflect on what the two frameworks in her book – the Matrix of Domination in global health, and Transformative Global Health - have to offer us in a period radical transformation in the field. She will discuss pathways for action in a new era of global health which centres community narratives and social justice in these turbulent times.
About the speaker : Rochelle Burgess is Professor of Global Mental Health and Social Justice, UCL's first chair in Global Mental Health. She is interested in the promotion of community-led approaches to mental health and health improvement globally. Her work explores how communities navigate and respond to the political economy of poor health, with a particular emphasis on community-led efforts to address the impacts of broader development issues such as poverty, gender, racialisation and systems of governance, through community mobilisation and activism. For the past decade she has focused largely on mental wellbeing and the experience of common mental disorders in contexts of adversity. She is qualitative social scientist, trained at the London School of Economics and Political sciences, and a leading voice in the emerging field of social interventions in Global Mental Health. She has led a range of projects that focus on the development and evaluation of community mental health interventions (in South Africa, Colombia, UK and Zimbabwe) and has contributed her methodological and mental health expertise to projects on community-led responses to other health challenges, such as child health in Nigeria and Patient Centred outcomes for TB.
Rochelle is also Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Global Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health, at the Institute for Global Health at UCL. She is the founder and Director of UCL's Global Network on Mental Health and Child Marriage. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe, member of the ESRC peer review college, UK Trauma Council, among other affiliations and advisory board memberships. She has previously advised the WHO on mental health policy.
This is a great opportunity to connect with colleagues from across the University who share an interest in health and health systems across different settings. Join us to connect and learn!
