Dr. Jennifer Leaning is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, where she previously served as Director from 2010 to 2018. A retired Professor of the Practice at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, she co-founded and co-directed the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative from 2005 to 2010.
Dr. Leaning’s research focuses on public health in war, humanitarian law, human rights, and forced migration in the context of conflict and climate change. She has extensive field experience in crisis settings worldwide, including Afghanistan, the African Great Lakes, Bangladesh, and the Chad-Darfur border. She has authored numerous publications, including reports and policy briefs for international organizations and NGOs.
She is the lead editor of several books, including The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and its Reverberations. Dr. Leaning serves on various international boards, including the Steering Committees of the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC), and the Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance.