"Fellowship on Global Health 2026-2027"

The India China Institute (ICI) invites applications for a year-long, online, international research seminar on the histories, sociologies and political economies of public health in Asia.

The contemporary disarray in the fields of global health, international development, and international relations offers a unique opportunity for pluralizing narratives and imagining more just alternatives to existing global and national health systems. Such work requires not only critiques of extant inequitable arrangements but also studies of how effective public health systems were built in different parts of the world. As part of this affirmative work, ICI invites applications that investigate diverse, often neglected, histories of public health in Asia and the political, economic and sociological factors that animate them.

The seminar’s impetus is informed both by the current moment of disruption in global health and by the experience of the recent pandemic. As was vividly illustrated in the early months of COVID 19, wealth and economic development of a country were poorly correlated with how well the pandemic was managed. A range of countries in southeast and east Asia (but not exclusively in Asia) had significant success in curtailing morbidity and mortality while far wealthier countries in North America and Europe flailed. There are relatively few scholarly accounts of how these Asian countries, spanning different regime types and economic systems, have built broad-based, accessible public health systems. The field of global health has been dominated by a privileging of studies of donor-led single-disease programs and their critiques; there is sparse attention to histories of public health systems that have prioritized preventive and primary health and that have not followed donor-driven logics. In this seminar, we hope to address this lacuna and make more visible plural histories of public health.

We are interested in studies of India and China, and also of other Asian cases. For instance, we would be keen to include analyses of countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Taiwan, among others.

We invite applications on historical and contemporary analyses of public health. We welcome studies of structural and political determinants of health that consider how political ideology, state-making, and international affairs have shaped health systems. Proposals on the role of social movements and civil society organizations; histories of the developmental state; expertise and knowledge ecologies; international regimes of intellectual property, trade and debt, and how they have shaped the trajectory of public health systems are especially welcome.

The seminar will be interdisciplinary and include scholars and practitioners trained in relevant sciences, humanities and social science disciplines (such as epidemiology, history, anthropology, political science, science and technology studies, sociology, geography) or in professional fields (such as design, public health, and more). A PhD (or in some fields of practice, a Masters) in a relevant field is required. The seminar is open to both younger and to more established scholars and practitioners. We would especially like to encourage those based in institutions in Asia to apply.

A selection committee will review applications and invite 12-15 scholars or practitioners to join the seminar. The research seminar will meet twice a month, on zoom, from September 2026 to May 2027. The zoom meetings will be scheduled for weekdays in the morning US east coast time zones/evening in India and China time zones. Two in-person workshops are planned, tentatively for November 2026 and June 2027. Each participant will be expected to present their research in one of the zoom seminar sessions. They will be expected to attend and actively participate in all discussions, attend the in-person workshops, and contribute a research paper to an edited volume that will be produced at the end of the seminar.

The fellowship award comes with a $5,000 payment and fully paid travel and room and board for the workshops.

Learn more and apply today: https://www.indiachinainstitute.org/resources/research-fellowships/

Contact: indiachina@newschool.edu