Athena Madan

March 4, 2020 — People

Assistant Professor, Royal Roads University

Dr. Athena Madan looks at the intersections of health and politics, specifically in protracted conflict and fragile states, and as applied to intervention implementation for improved equity and social justice. Her work has contributed to global health; therapeutic governance/intergenerational trauma and reconciliation; genocide and human rights; social innovation and theories of change; education in emergencies; rehabilitation of child soldiers; the militarisation of aid; socio-political contexts of addictions; refugee mental health; and health and war. She is half Filipino and half Indian.

Madan has experience as a clinician, researcher, photographer and aid worker across 18 countries and five continents. Countries of expertise include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kashmir, South Africa and Vietnam.

Madan has worked with international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) such as Doctors Without Borders, the Carter Center, and Save the Children. She has supported international collaborations with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Madan has provided anti-racist subject matter expertise to provincial governments for health equity and child welfare training reform. She has served as an election observer for the Democratic Republic of Congo. Madan is bilingual in English and French and has taught in England, France and the United States.

Madan holds a PhD in Public Health and Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto (2014) and post-doctoral degrees in Global Mental Health and the Social Aetiology of Mental Illness from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine (2015).

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