Prof. Bertrand Taithe
Principal Investigator
Bertrand is the Principal Investigator on the project. He is a founding member of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute and was the executive director from 2009 - 2020. His research interests are primarily on humanitarianism and humanitarian aid practices. He has published on the history of humanitarian medicine, the history of humanitarian and missionary aid and aid in conflicts. He has been working as part of the scientific committee of MSF CRASH since 2013, he was Elected Member of the board of the International Humanitarian Studies Association between 2016 and 2018 and an elected Member of the Steering Committee of ALNAP Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action between 2014-2017.

Dr Maria Cullen
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Maria received her PhD qualification in History from the University of Galway in 2023. Her thesis analysed how French and British political cultures conditioned Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam's interpretations of ethical humanitarian action in the 1980s. Through three case-studies (the Cambodian crisis following the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the Ethiopian famine 1984-1985, and the Salvadoran refugee crisis in Honduras), she examined the practical evolution of humanitarian norms in this decade, and interrogated the forces that shaped how Western NGOs engaged with human rights discourse during the Cold War. More broadly, she is interested in the specific social and cultural backgrounds which have informed the elaboration of 'universal' humanitarian values. In her current role on the 'Developing Humanitarian Medicine' project, she is researching the standardisation of humanitarian medical procurement and logistical networks and how they shaped clinical practices in operational settings.

Dr Chimwemwe Phiri
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Chim is a visual anthropologist with a focus on the intersection of visual culture, archival practices, and the history of medicine. She completed my PhD in medical anthropology and visual history at Durham University, where my thesis explored both historical and contemporary interpretations of colonial-era medical photographic collections housed in four UK archives related to Malawi and Sudan. At HCRI, she is contributing to the Developing Humanitarian Medicine project as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. She will build on my previous research on patient-centred approaches to examine the historical context of humanitarian medicine in Malawi.

Dr Janelle Winters
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Janelle completed her PhD in population health sciences at the University of Edinburgh (2020), where her research focused on the impact of the World Bank on global health since the 1970s. Her broad research interests lie on the intersection of global health governance, infectious disease control policy, and history. As a postdoctoral researcher embedded in a COVID-19 clinical trial run by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit from 2021-2023, she began ongoing research on the challenges of producing evidence during public health emergencies. She is currently developing case studies of drug markets and access in post-Alma Ata humanitarian settings as a member of the core Developing Humanitarian Medicine team. Janelle has experience teaching global health history, ethics, financing, and politics courses, and previously worked in global health programme management at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership, American Society for Microbiology, and Asian University for Women. She has a long-term commitment to interdisciplinarity and holds a MA in the history of medicine (Newcastle University), MSc in epidemiology of microbial diseases (Yale University), and BSc in zoology and the history of science (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Janelle is an affiliate member of the Faculty of History and Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.

Flora Chatt
Archivist
Flora qualified as an archivist in 2022, graduating from the Masters in Archives and Records Management (MARM) course at the University of Liverpool. She has worked in a variety of archives and records management roles, including for the NHS, the General Medical Council and the University of Oxford. She has been in post as the Humanitarian Archivist since October 2023.

Dr Courtney Stickland
Archivist
Courtney is the oral history researcher and archivist for the RIAH (Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare) project. She is currently creating the 'Attacks on Healthcare' collection at the University Library's Humanitarian Archive, constructing an oral history with key actors in the humanitarian healthcare sector about the development of the concept of 'attacks on healthcare' since the 1980s with particular focus on the emergence of various international initiatives on the issue in the early 2000s. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Manchester and more recently a MA in Archives and Records Management from the University of Liverpool.

Dr Stephanie Rinaldi
Programme Manager
Stephanie has a doctorate in Political Theory and has been working at HCRI since 2017. She currently manages the Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare project and has previously managed HCRI’s Emergency Medical Teams research programmes. She has been working with Prof Taithe closely on DHM since its inception in 2022.