Sridhar Venkatapuram is an Associate Professor (UK- Senior Lecturer) in Global Health and Philosophy.  Sridhar conducts impact driven interdisciplinary research that aims to improve understanding and realization of health equity and justice. He is known for helping establish the area of ‘health justice’ philosophy, for engaging with and advising public/global health practitioners, and for amplifying ethical reasoning in public/global health education, research, and practice.

Sridhar has been at the forefront of global health and public health ethics for over 30 years starting as a researcher at Human Rights Watch documenting HIV/AIDS related abuses in India in 1994.  He has degrees in international relations (Brown AB ‘94), history (SOAS 91-92), global public health (Harvard ‘00), sociology (Cambridge ‘05), and political philosophy (Cambridge ‘09). 

Before joining King's, he was a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow and Lecturer in Ethics at LSHTM, and an Affiliated Lecturer at Cambridge University. And from 2008 to 2011 he was Co-Investigator with Sir Michael Marmot, Chair of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.  He was on leave from 5/2018 to 9/2019 working as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research fellow at the World Health Organization (HQ), and Fellow of the Global Health Centre, IHEID/ Geneva Graduate Institute.

Sridhar has worked with or advised diverse organizations including Open Societies Institute, Population Council, Doctors of the World, Health Foundation, Participle, Wellcome Trust, Minorities International Group, and others. 

He currently serves as ethics advisor for:

• WHO COVID Treatment Guidelines Development Group
• WHO Ebola Infection, Prevention, & Control GDG
• Chair, International Resource Group for Global Health Justice (IRG-GHJ).
• British Medical Association (BMA – MEC)
• British Medical Journal (BMJ)
• Faculty of Public Health, Vice-Chair – Ethics Committee

Sridhar's current reseach interests and projects cover the following topics:

1. the place of health in theories of social/global justice, with primary focus on the capabilities approach;
2. the philosophical construction of a moral/human right to health;
3. global justice and health inequalities;
4. the ethics of addressing social determinants of health and social gradient in health;
5. philosophy and ethics of health economics;
6. philosophy and ethics of epidemiology and evidence based health policies.

He recently co-edited two books

Vulnerable: The Policy, Law and Ethics of COVID-19 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press).

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health (Routledge)

He welcomes communication with researchers and prospective PhD students in public and global health with projects that have significant philosophical components, as well as from philosophy students in public health ethics, global health ethics, and global justice.

1. the place of health in theories of social/global justice, with primary focus on the capabilities approach;
2. the philosophical construction of a moral/human right to health;
3. global justice and health inequalities;
4. the ethics of addressing social determinants of health and social gradient in health;
5. philosophy and ethics of health economics;
6. philosophy and ethics of epidemiology and evidence based health policies.

You can watch his TEDx talk on the human right to health capability here