Announcing the 2026-27 Non-Resident Global Health Politics Fellows
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future is pleased to announce its 2026-27 Global Health Politics Fellows. The distinguished group of Non-Resident Fellows were selected by the Global Health Politics Workshop’s (GHPW) Steering Committee.
Fellows will participate in GHPW events throughout the course of the academic year and receive feedback and mentorship from a Steering Committee member on a research paper in the field of global health politics.
Meet the 2026-27 Global Health Politics Fellows:
Lynda Gilby
Lynda Gilbyis a global health researcher from New Zealand whose work examines how transnational actors influence global health policymaking and international institutions. Her doctorate analysed how alliances of conservative actors, targeting sexual and reproductive health and rights within the United Nations and European Union institutions, sought to erode democratic governance and roll back hard-won commitments to health and rights. She also holds a Master of Science in Public and Global Health. Lynda’s research has been published in multiple international peer-reviewed journals, including Social Science & Medicine and BMJ Global Health. Her current research as part of the Transnational Flows project at Tampere University in Finland analyses how transatlantic conservative networks attempt to shape global health agendas and contest established forms of authority, scientific expertise, and governance.
Nicolás Juárez
Nicolás Juárez is a PhD candidate in Social Work and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Working at the intersection of political economy and global health, his research interests are primarily centered on justice-oriented and critical perspectives of water governance. His dissertation research currently focuses on the limits of state, market, and community-based water governance amid physical abundance, utilizing an ethnographic analysis of water provision in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
Aaron Koay
Aaron Koay is currently a PhD Candidate at the UCL Institute for Global Health. In collaboration with the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) at Monash University Malaysia, Aaron’s interdisciplinary PhD draws on critical social theories, epidemiology and policy studies to explore how intersectionality can be operationalized in policymaking to promote health equity. Aaron’s broader research spans health policy and systems research, global/regional health governance, and the political and structural determinants of health, with particular interests in non-communicable diseases, planetary health and inclusion health. Aaron is a Pharmacist (MPSI), Co-Chair of the UCL Critical Global Health Network, Secretariat Member of the Policy Hub for Public Health Emergencies and Malaysia’s Health Equity Review, Research Consultant for Doctors on Ground and Associate Editor of Health Research Policy and Systems. You can find Aaron upside down on his yoga mat when he is not at work.
Ahsan Mashhood
Ahsan Mashhood is a DPhil (PhD) student in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. His research examines the social epidemiology of suicide in Pakistan, using mixed methods to understand how suicidal distress, help-seeking, and suicide outcomes are shaped by gender, sexuality, social inequality, and institutional systems. He is particularly interested in how gender, sex, and sexuality are measured, interpreted, and sometimes rendered invisible in suicide research across low- and middle-income countries, especially Pakistan. His doctoral work brings together epidemiology, qualitative research, critical social theory, and public mental health, with a focus on young people and structurally marginalized communities. Central to Ahsan’s scientific practice, social activism, and philosophy of life is a commitment to radical optimism: the belief that careful, humane, and politically engaged research can still create possibilities for change, even in dark times for global mental health. Prior to joining the DSPI, he worked as a researcher at the Legal Aid Society.
Gabriela Noles Cotito
Gabriela Noles Cotito, MD, MPH, MA, PhD, is a physician, public health practitioner, and interdisciplinary scholar whose research examines how historical and political systems of racial inequality shape health and well-being, particularly among Black populations in Latin America. She recently earned her PhD in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where her doctoral research examined how the legacies of slavery, abolition, and agrarian reform continue to shape the lives of Black rural communities in her home country, Peru. Her current research focuses on the political determinants of health, racial and health justice, and reparative approaches to addressing health inequities.
Dominic Pfister
Dominic Pfister is an assistant professor in the École supérieure d’études internationales at Université Laval. His current research focuses on the transformation of international disease governance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the role played by international health standards in creating and maintaining hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South. His broader work focuses on how technical forms of governance shape power relations in international relations.