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Wolfson Institute of Population Health
  1. WIPH
  2. Centres
  3. Centre for Public Health and Policy
  4. Global Public Health Unit
  5. M-BRIGHT
  6. UK Team

UK Team

 

This team consists of staff from Queen Mary University of London’s Centre for Public Health and Policy, and the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, alongside external advisors based in the UK.

Profile photo of Jennifer Lau

Professor Jennifer Lau

Jennifer earned a Psychology degree from UCL, a PhD from King’s College London on gene-environment interactions in youth depression, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the US National Institute of Mental Health. This fellowship involved exploring the role of genetic variants on neural circuits and information-processing. She was then appointed Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she started the Researching Emotional Disorders and Development Lab.

At QM, Jennifer is a Principal Investigator on a number of externally funded projects exploring mechanisms of and interventions for child and adolescent anxiety, depression and loneliness. More recently, she has become interested in the role of social connections in building resilience, well-being and good health in young people but also people with serious mental illness.

Dr Francois van Loggerenberg, CPsychol AFBPsS

Francois van Loggerenberg has a PhD from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, having trained as an experimental psychologist in South Africa. He is a chartered Psychologist with over 20 years' experience working in Global Health, initially on the behavioural aspects of HIV infection mental health. He has an interest in efficient and effective ways of addressing the mental health treatment gap, especially in the primary care setting or in HIV infection or for adolescents and young people.

He is a Global Health Research Fellow at the Youth Resilience Unit, Teaching Fellow at the University of Oxford, and the Project Manager and Co-Investigator on this NIHR project.

Dr José Manuel Roche, BA MSc DPhil

José Manuel has over 25 years of research and policy experience in international development working for civil society organizations, governments, and academia. He is Research Associate at the Oxford Department of International Development in the University of Oxford, and at Centro de Investigación Social (CISOR) in Venezuela. He also serves in the Advisory Board of the School of Global Development in the University of East Anglia. His publications include co-authoring the book “Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis” published by the Oxford University Press, along with peer-reviewed journal articles in: World Development, Journal of International Development, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Social Indicators Research and Work, Employment and Society. He has also published a wide range of policy reports and papers published by international agencies. José Manuel has also taught various undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of Oxford, University of Sussex, University College of London among others.

Profile photo of Giuliano Russo

Dr Giuliano Russo, PhD

Giuliano is a Senior Lecturer in Global Public Health at QMUL’s Centre for Public Health and Policy. He has over 20 years of professional experience in academia and in the public and private sector, having previously worked for the University of Lisbon (Portugal), the Overseas Development Institute (UK), the Government of Mozambique, the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (Mexico), as well as for SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (Spain and the UK).

At QMUL, Giuliano teaches Medicines and Pharmaceutical Markets, as well as Research Methods. Currently, he is the Principal Investigator for a research project on physician dual practice in Mozambique and South Africa, and Co-Investigator in a project on lay mental health interventions in Vietnam and Cambodia, both funded by the National Institute of Health Research. In the past, he has led projects on the impact of the economic crisis on health system and workforce in Brazil (Medical Research Council), and on the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of health services in the African continent (UKRI).

Dr Fiona Samuels, BA MSc PhD

Fiona is an anthropologist with over two decades of experience crossing the fields of public health and social development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. She has worked extensively on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, either focusing directly on it or exploring it as a cross-cutting theme intersecting with other thematic areas including migration, conflict/fragile contexts, gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, health systems strengthening and social protection. She uses various intersecting lenses through which to explore these areas including gender, life-course, race, ethnicity, social norms and equity. She has worked extensively in Vietnam and has also worked in Cambodia. Fiona has used a range of methodological approaches (qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, participatory), has carried implementation research and has applied co-production and human centred design approaches. She has led multi-country studies with multi-disciplinary teams and has engaged actively with policy makers and end-users at all stages.

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