Matthew M. Kavanagh, PhD

Matthew M. Kavanagh, PhD, directs Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy & Politics, a cross-campus collaboration across the School of Health and O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He is also Assistant Professor of Global Health and Visiting Professor of Law.

Dr. Kavanagh’s research and policy work sit at the intersection of global health, law, and political science with a focus on the political determinants of health, law and policy during pandemics including AIDS, COVID-19, and beyond, and on inequality as a driver of disease. A political scientist by training, over the last twenty years he has served in a range of roles inside and outside academia including at the United Nations as Deputy Executive Director ad interim at UNAIDS and policy director for several NGOs in the US and Southern Africa. He has done research in South Africa, Malawi, Haiti, Lesotho, India, and Thailand and was a visiting researcher at the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights, and International Law in Johannesburg and the University of the West Indies Law Faculty at Cave Hill. Grants for this work have come from the National Science Foundation, USAID, U.S. State Department, World Health Organization, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations and others. He has served on various scientific and technical advisory bodies for UNAIDS and the World Health Organization and on the council of the American Political Science Association Health Politics and Policy Section. He has presented his research and analysis before the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Right to Health, members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, European Parliament, and South African Department of Trade and Industry.

His work has appeared in The Lancet, Foreign Policy, JAMA, Journal of International Affairs, Studies in Comparative International Development, Health & Human Rights and other leading journals and he have been interviewed in outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and Science on the politics of global health.

Dr. Kavanagh holds a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, certificate in health law from Penn Law, Masters in communities and policy from Harvard University, and BA from Vassar College.