Centre Director to advise The Lancet Group for Racial Equality
The director of the University’s WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories, Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, has been appointed to the Racial Equality Advisory Board of The Lancet.
Equality
In 2020 as part of a commitment to addressing racial inequality in its workforce and editorial practices, The Lancet set up a Group for Racial Equality, known as GRacE. The Racial Equality Advisory Board has been set up to guide the GRacE group.
Professor Bhattacharya, joined the board earlier this year.
Professor Bhattacharya’s appointment comes just over a year after his work to ensure ethical research was instrumental in developing the WHO’s ethical guidelines for COVID-19 research. Under his directorship the Centre for Global Health Histories was redesignated as a WHO Collaborating Centre in 2017, a distinction it still holds.
Excited
Professor Bhattacharya said: "I'm mostly excited about the quality and record of leadership provided by fellow board members. But also the fact that I am the only historian/humanities scholar in the mix, and the Lancet has consistently underlined the importance they will give to critical historical analysis in this work. A global policy role that is built on academic work is just perfect."
Educated in India and the UK, Professor Bhattacharya specialises in the health, medical, political and social history of nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia, as well as the history and contemporary workings of international and global health organisations, and their programmes around the world.
He is editor of the world leading journal Medical History, a Cambridge University Press publication, produced with the support of the Wellcome Trust.
- Find out more about the members of The Lancet Racial Equality Advisory Board.