DrSamira Barbara Jabakhanji

Samira Jabakhanji is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Population Health, where she is currently working as part of the Converge Centre for Chronic Disease and Population Health Research, coordinating the RCSI Online Sustainable Healthcare course, and representing the Health Equity Research Alliance (HERA) as one of its founding members.

With a background in public health and healthcare management, Samira first came to RCSI for a joint MSc project between Maastricht University (Netherlands) and RCSI, which led on to her PhD project on early childhood obesity in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine in RCSI. She joined the Healthcare Outcomes Research Centre as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019 and has been involved in a variety of Irish and global health research projects and teaching in the School of Population Health since then. Samira has previously worked as a junior policy advisor at Emric+ in Maastricht (Netherlands) and as a researcher at Heidelberg University (Germany), and she served as a committee member at the Association for the Study of Obesity on the Island of Ireland.

Samira's work often is transdisciplinary and involves collaborators from across RCSI, Ireland, Europe and international partners. Internally, Samira has collaborated with RCSI's School of Physiotherapy, Department of Health Psychology, School of Nursing and Midwifery, and Graduate School of Healthcare Management. Previous roles furthermore involved collaborations with local emergency services, healthcare providers, and local and national policy representatives from across Europe. Moreover, this is reflected in collaborative research projects with the World Health Organization, World Bank and Irish health governance institutions; research networks and projects undertaken with international universities; and educational activities and curriculum development with Würzburg University (Germany) and Mahidol University (Thailand).