Profile

I am an academic researcher working at the intersection of history, politics, and the political economy of international and global health. My work engages with questions of health sovereignty, access to medicines, alternative pharmaceutical research and development, and South-South collaboration. I am currently based at the Humanitarian and Crisis Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester, contributing to the Wellcome Trust-funded project Developing Humanitarian Medicine: from Alma-Ata to Bio-tech, a History of Norms, Knowledge Production and Care (1978-2020). I am also a member of the PharmaGHaSTS Research Network: Critical Social Science of Pharmaceuticals at the Intersection of Global Health and Science, Technology, and Society, co-sponsored by Université Paris-Cité and King’s College London. My research traces the global access to medicines movement from the 1980s to the present, with a particular focus on alternative drug development models, including the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campagne pour l'Accès aux Médicaments Essentiels (CAME) and product development partnerships such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), that challenge market-driven pharmaceutical logic and reorient innovation towards public health needs. In addition, as a supporter of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs), I am centrally involved in researching the local origins and development of emergency medical teams in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa, examining how communities, health systems, and regional actors have built local capacity for emergency medical response, and how these grassroots and regional efforts have informed and shaped the broader global EMTs framework.

Monograph

Health Sovereignty:

China, WHO and Reconfiguration of Global Health Partnerships

Forth coming

Publications

Chen, L. (2026). Creating State Secrets: China, Foreign Policy and Sharing of Epidemiological Data, 1949–1979. Minerva.

Chen, L. (2024). Navigating resistance in global health governance: Certification of smallpox eradication in China. Global Public Health, 19(1).

Upcoming Engagement Activities

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Lectures/Talks

Conferences

Past Activites

Past Activites

Lectures/Talks

Conferences Attendances