My research (see full CV) seeks to understand how political institutions at the global and national level shape inequality. Those institutions—from national laws and civil society organization to international norms and organizing bodies of global governance—structure how power is distributed and its effects, for good or for ill, on people’s lives. Health, in particularly health in pandemics, is a crucial lens through which to understand how these institutions function, both because it reflects fundamental questions of who lives and who dies and because it is a manifestation of the effects of institutions ripe for empirical study. I take a mixed-methods approach to social science research and bring my training in both law and political science to bear, and seek in particular to bring these questions into the public health and medical literatures, where they have been insufficiently examined.

Book PROJECT

Pandemic Laws, Pandemic Politics: How governance failures have driven the world’s deadliest viruses (2026, Under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Political Institutions & Inequality in Pandemics

Multi-year project funded by the Government of Switzerland looking at how inequality along various axes drives vulnerability to pandemics. In collaboration with the United Nations we created a global council co-chaired by a set of eminent researchers and political leaders. I have anchored a set of empirical analyses that have been presented through the G20 Joint Health & Finance ministers’ task force on how inequality undermines effective governance and creates challenges for policy coordination in pandemics. Our major report will be out in November 2025.

G20 & Global Governance of Health

Multi-year research project exploring how the G20 has played a role as an international governance platform for health, how institutional strengths and weaknesses have enabled or disabled action, and in particular how the “Southern Presidencies” in which India, Brazil, and South Africa have held sequential presidencies 2023, 2024, and 2025 have reshaped the G20’s ambition.

Lancet Commission

Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health (PI & Head of the Research Secretariat): The commission is the first Lancet Commission to look at the ways international institutions and political structures drive racially-disparate health outcomes at a global level. Positing racism as a trans-national phenomenon linked to a particular period of colonialism, not only an issue to be considered nationally and comparatively, the commission has set out to (i) diagnose the mechanisms through which racism works in global health; (ii) identify best practices and actionable anti-racist strategies with a focus on structural and institutional drivers.

Legal Tracking Projects

Health & Care Workers Policy Lab (PI): Brings together information about laws and policies related to the rights, training, management, and protection of health workers, corresponding to international agreements made under the health and care workers compact. Published in partnership with the World Health Organization. (www.hcwpolicylab.org)

HIV Policy Lab (PI): Measures the HIV-related law and policy environment in 194 countries. Gathers and codes law and policy information across 33 different indicators (50 including sub-indicators) ranging from HIV treatment and testing policies to criminal law, health workforce policy, intellectual property, and more. Online visualization and research platform (www.hivpolicylab.org).

COVID Law Lab (Co-PI with K Gottschalk): Gathers and categorizes laws and policies related to COVID-19 from over 190 countries, focused on emergency declarations, quarantine measures, disease surveillance, legal measures relating to mask-wearing, social distancing, and access to medication and vaccines. Published with WHO, UNDP, UNAIDS, and Georgetown University (www.covidlawlab.org)

Other Projects

Community Led Monitoring & Social Accountability: Building accountability and improving the quality of health services through community-led, routine data collection and evidence-based advocacy. Read our newest piece on CLM.