The Global Health Politics Podcast

Joseph Harris
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Social Sciences
  • Updated Monthly

Hosted by Joseph Harris, the Global Health Politics Podcast features intimate, one-of-a-kind conversations with leading scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and activists working on critical issues in global health. The podcast enjoys support from Boston University's Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

  1. May 29

    Season 3, Episode 1: Sapna Desai on Women's Health and Unnecessary Hysterectomy

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down to talk with Dr. Sapna Desai, a Senior Fellow at the Population Council Institute in New Delhi, India. A public health expert with over 20 years of experience working on women's health in India, she holds a PhD in epidemiology and population from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Master's in Population and International Health from Harvard University. They talk about maternal health, sterilization and population control, the problem of unnecessary hysterectomy in India, feminism, evidence and activism, and the movement to decolonize global health.

    30 min

  2. Apr 30

    Season 2, Episode 12: Lioba Hirsch on Antiblackness and Global Health

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. Lioba Hirsch, a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. They talk about her new book, Antiblackness and Global Health: A Response to Ebola in the Colonial Wake, as well as racism, decolonization, North-South power dynamics, global health governance, inequalities in relation to COVID-19, and infectious disease response in Africa.

    48 min

  3. Mar 29

    Season 2, Episode 11: Katharina Krause and Brooke Bocast on The Many Ways of Doing Research on Global Health Politics

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with two researchers doing very exciting - but also very different - kinds of research on global health politics. In the first conversation, I talk with Dr. Katharina Krause, an international relations scholar who is a Research Associate at the University of Tubingen about her book project on the relationship between health security and images of infectious diseases like Ebola. In the second conversation, I talk with Dr. Brooke Bocast, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Western Washington University about her book, If Books Fail, Try Beauty: Educated Womanhood and the New East Africa. The book won the Council on Anthropology and Education's Outstanding Book Award; the Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize; and was named Honorable Mention for the Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. Both great conversations.

    57 min

  4. Feb 26

    Season 2, Episode 10: District of Columbia Shadow Representative to Congress Oye Owolewa on Political Advocacy in a Time of Occupation

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Adeoye "Oye" Owolewa. A pharmacist recognized for his efforts to protect public health, Dr. Owolewa has served as the Shadow Representative to Congress for the nation's capital since his election in November 2020. He shares his experience as a Nigerian American working in politics, advocating for D.C. statehood at a time when the nation's capital was under federal occupation by National Guard troops, a federalized Metropolitan Police Department, and ICE agents. He reflects on his experience working as a pharmacist at a time when Medicaid is being cut, scientific research for drug development has been slashed, tens of thousands of federal civil servants have been let go, and U.S. global health and development institutions have been decimated. And he offers his vision as a candidate for a seat on the Council of the District of Columbia, also known as the D.C. Council.

    43 min

  5. Jan 28

    Season 2, Episode 9: New York Times Best- Selling Author John Green on Global Health Injustice and Tuberculosis

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with New York Times best-selling author John Green to talk about his new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. Best known for novels, like Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, which have been turned into Hollywood movies, in his latest book Mr. Green turns his attention to a disease for which we have a cure, but which still kills over a million people a year, most in poor countries. They talk about what moved him to write this book, his work on the board of Partners in Health, and his advocacy for addressing global health injustices.

    31 min

  6. 12/30/2025

    Season 2, Episode 8: Madhu Pai on Global Health Inequality

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with one of the most prominent voices in global health today, Dr. Madhu Pai. Dr. Pai is a medical doctor and Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health at McGill University and the Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre in Montreal. In this wide-ranging conversation, they talk about tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, the climate crisis, the roots of global health injustice, the recent foreign aid cuts, Global North-Global South inequalities, and moves to decolonize global health.

    54 min

  7. 11/30/2025

    Season 2, Episode 7: Thurka Sangaramoorthy on Immigration and Health

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with American University anthropologist Thurka Sangaramoorthy to discuss her work on immigration and health. They talk about her work with Haitian immigrants in South Florida that was the subject of her first book; her work at the CDC and book on rapid ethnographic assessments; her new book - Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America on how immigrants navigate healthcare challenges in rural Maryland; the field of anthropology; and her recent experience working as Refugee Coordinator for the State Department's response in Sudan and South Sudan.

    55 min

  8. 10/30/2025

    Season 2, Episode 6: James Pfeiffer on Debt, Austerity, and Decolonization

    Send us Fan Mail In this long-awaited episode, originally recorded in Fall 2022, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. James Pfeiffer, Professor of Global Health and Anthropology at University of Washington. They talk about global health work in Mozambique; World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs; debt and austerity and their impact on development; and the movement to decolonize global health.

    46 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
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5 Ratings

About

Hosted by Joseph Harris, the Global Health Politics Podcast features intimate, one-of-a-kind conversations with leading scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and activists working on critical issues in global health. The podcast enjoys support from Boston University's Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

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