Lesley Doyal
Lesley Doyal was educated in sociology and social policy at the London School of Economics. During a lengthy period of teaching and research at the University of North London (1967-1988) she published The Political Economy of Health (1979) which was widely praised as a rigorous synthesis of issues relating to health, medicine and development. She was also instrumental in setting up one of the first Women’s Studies Units in a UK university. This was reflected in her extensive research and publications on gender and health which eventually culminated in her book What Makes Women Sick (1995) which has been and used by scholars and activists in many parts of the world.
In 1988 she moved to the University of the West of England as Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Health and Applied Social Studies. During this period she led the process of incorporating a wide range of health professional training courses into the undergraduate programme at the University. As a result, much of her research activity shifted towards health and health care in the UK with a particular interest in occupational health, migrant health workers and the division of labour in the NHS. This work was funded by a number of bodies including the UK Social Science Research Council, Inner London Education Authority, Regional NHS Research and Development Directorate and the Pharmacy Research Trust. She also co-founded HELIOS - an innovative smoking prevention project funded by the UK Health Education Authority.
In 1994 she moved to the University of Bristol as Professor of Health and Social Care in the School for Policy Studies. This enabled her to further develop her interest in gender and health with particular reference to the social determinants of health in men. During this period she worked extensively on issues of gender mainstreaming and acted as consultant to a number of organisations including the World Health Organisation, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the UK Equal Opportunities Commission and the Global Forum for Health Research. She was also involved in a range of advocacy activities on gender issues including ten years spent on the board of Womankind Worldwide.
The end of apartheid in 1994 opened up the possibility of working in South Africa and this has continued to the present day via links with both the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town where she was appointed Visiting Professor. Working with the UCT Women’s Health Research Unit she developed a gender and health unit as part of the Masters in Public Health course which she taught each year until 2009. She also undertook gender mainstreaming work in the Medical School as well as providing support for a number of local researchers working in the field.
Partly as a result of her experiences in South Africa her research activities over the past decade have increasingly focused on issues relating to the global HIV pandemic. This began with a number of qualitative studies of HIV positive African migrants living in the UK. Using an intersectional perspective these studies explored the lived experiences of women and men of varying sexualities. Background research, insights and research findings from these studies broadened the scope of her interests and led ultimately to her latest book Living with HIV and Dying with AIDS: Diversity, Inequality and Human Rights in the Global Pandemic (Ashgate 2013).
website: www.lesleydoyal.com