When: 26 September 2024, 18:00
Where: OeAD house, Ebendorferstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
Moderator: Maiada Hadaia, OeAD
After the talk socializing over Ugandan food and drinks
Esther Mukooza (PhD) is a medical anthropologist who is passionate about meeting people at their point of need to alleviate suffering through social sector policy development and programming. In addition to humanitarian work, she has a strong interest in academia where she uses teaching, research and advocacy to contribute to improving the health of populations. She is an initiator and driver of the change needed to embed human well-being holistically, and has done so through service, high-level discussion and impactful action in the education, energy and health sectors.
Prior to joining Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), Dr Mukooza completed her doctoral studies at the University of Vienna, funded by the Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education and Research for Development (APPEAR). Since 2015, she has been invited to speak to medical and anthropology students at Gulu University in Uganda, the University of Vienna, the Medical University of Vienna, and Webster University - Vienna on global health issues. She has been awarded an Ernst Mach follow-up grant to continue her research at the Medical University of Vienna on the Nodding Syndrome, a neurological condition with unknown origin that mostly affects children. As a humanitarian worker with MSF, her advocacy and research work in the field of HIV, TB, and sexual health has resulted in several journal publications and policy changes at national and global levels.
Prior to her PhD, she served as the Executive Secretary of the Uganda National Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Association (UNREEEA), where she focused on building and strengthening collaborative networks between the public and private energy sectors, identifying opportunities to address the energy-health nexus, and leading teams in competency-based curriculum development. She worked on the European Union-funded project “Mobilizing social sciences against infectious threats” SoNAR-Global and initiated the collaboration between St. Lawrence University in Kampala, Uganda and the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, both founding members of the Austrian African Research Network (Africa-UniNet), established in 2020 to provide a long-term, stable basis for cooperation between Austrian and African universities and research institutions.
Please register here until 24 September 2024.