Anne-Emanuelle Birn

Anne-Emanuelle Birn is Professor of Global Development Studies and Global Health at the University of Toronto.

Previously she was a professor at the New School in New York, worked at the Pan American Health Organization, and has been a visiting professor in Montevideo, Paris, and at the World Health Organization.

Her research explores the history, politics, and political economy of international and global health, focusing on Latin American health and social justice movements, among other topics. She has published widely in Latin American, African, Asian, North American, and European journals and presses. Her books include: Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico (Rochester, 2006); Comrades in Health: US Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home (Rutgers, 2013); Oxford University Press’s Textbook of International Health: Global Health in a Dynamic World (2009) and Textbook of Global Health (2017/18); Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America (Duke, 2020), and the forthcoming Going Public: The Unmaking and Remaking of Universal Healthcare (Cambridge, 2023/4).

Professor Birn’s current projects examine: the history of child health and child rights in Uruguay; social justice-oriented South-South health cooperation; health harms of Canadian extractivism; and the history of global/international health in the Americas. A former Canada Research Chair in International Health, she has been recognized among the top 100 Women Leaders in Global Health, and was named to the List of Canadian Women in Global Health. She served on the Independent Panel on Global Governance for Health, and is currently a member of the Collective for the Political Determinants of Health (both based at the University of Oslo). Among other scholar-activist roles, she is a core member of the Canada country circle of the People’s Health Movement and is currently the North American regional representative on the Global Steering Council of the People’s Health Movement.