Dr Sridhar Venkatapuram

Sridhar Venkatapuram is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Global Health and Philosophy. He is based at the King’s Global Health Institute where he is Deputy Director, and Director of Global Health Education and Training.

Sridhar conducts impact driven interdisciplinary research that aims to improve understanding and realization of health equity and justice. He is known for helping establish the area of ‘health justice’ philosophy, for engaging with and advising public/global health practitioners, and for amplifying ethical reasoning in public/global health education, research, and practice. He has been at the forefront of public/global health ethics for over 25 years starting in the early 1990s as the first researcher at Human Rights Watch to focus directly on health-related human rights violations (HIV/AIDS in India).

He has won numerous awards, grants, and fellowships including Wellcome Trust Research and Senior Research Fellowships. He has been elected to prestigious professional organizations, commissions, and panels including the RSA, Faculty of Public Health, Human Development and Capability Association, and Lancet-Univ. of Oslo Panel on Global Governance for Health.

Sridhar has worked with or advised diverse organizations such as Population Council, Soros Foundations, Doctors of the World, Minorities Rights Group International, Health Foundation, and the World Health Organization (HQ, MENA). His academic training is in a range of disciplines, including International Relations (Brown University), History (SOAS), Public Health (Harvard University), Sociology (Cambridge University) and Political Philosophy (Cambridge University).

His doctoral dissertation on the philosophical argument for a moral/human right to 'the capability to be healthy' was examined and passed without corrections by Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate, economist and philosopher. It formed the basis of his first book, Health Justice: An argument from the capabilities approach (Polity Press). His latest book is a co-edited collection of scholarship on the philosophy of public health.

He is currently serving as an ethics advisor for:

• WHO COVID-19 Clinical Management/Treatment Guideline Development Group
• WHO Ebola Infection Prevention Control Guideline Development Group
• NHS London Ethics Advisory Committee
• Chair, International Resource Group for Global Health Justice (IRG-GHJ).

Sridhar welcomes communication from research students with projects strongly grounded in both philosophy and health sciences.

He can be found at @sridhartweet

Research

• Health, inequality and social justice
• Global health ethics
• Human rights and health, political philosophy

Sridhar’s academic research and expertise is in global/public health, human rights, ethics and philosophy. He aims to bridge normative reasoning, particularly about social/global justice, equity and rights with relevant natural and social sciences related to human health and health inequalities.  

Further details

See Sridhar's research profile