Faculty Fellow, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
Faculty Fellow
Harris Ali is a sociologist at York University who teaches courses in environmental studies, disasters, social theory, and environmental health. His studies focus on the social, political, and environmental dimensions of disease outbreaks and environmental disasters. He has conducted various studies on different types of infectious disease outbreaks in various parts of the world, including E. coli in Walkerton, Ontario, tuberculosis amongst the homeless in Toronto, community-based responses to Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Alongside his long-time research colleague and Dahdaleh Institute Faculty Fellow Roger Keil, Prof. Ali completed a comprehensive study of the 2003 outbreak of SARS in Singapore, Toronto, and Hong Kong. This culminated in an edited volume on SARS (Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City), which was recognized by The Globe and Mail as one of the "top ten books that offer lessons from past pandemics." He is currently a co-principal investigator with Fuyuki Kurasawa on a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant that involves big data analyses and AI to understand the role of social media in flaming and countering anti-Asian racism during the present COVID response.
Research keywords:
Politics of infectious disease in the Global South; Frantz Fanon; disease and cities in the Global South
You may also be interested in...
Preparing for Healthy Futures in Bangladesh in a World of Climate Change
Originally published March 10, 2022 Biography Dr. Byomkesh Talukder is the inaugural Planetary Health Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, where he works at the intersection of health, sustainable development, climate change and food and ...Read more about this Post
Celebrating Theresa: Honoured as an Emerging Leader at York University
Theresa Dinh, Institute Coordinator, was recognized with the 2024 Gary Brewer Emerging Leader Award at the recent President's Staff Recognition Awards ceremony– a distinction that recognizes an early-career professional who has demonstrated significant promise of ...Read more about this Post
Recap — Bridging Local and Global Applications of Clinical Public Health, with Ross Upshur
On November 13, the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health Dr. Ross Upshur presented an insightful seminar on the integration of clinical medicine and public health, highlighting its potential to transform health systems. He ...Read more about this Post