Dasha Reddy – Tammy Chen Memorial Scholarship
Email: dashareddy03@gmail.com
Programme: PhD, Law, University of Ulster
Biography (IN ENGLISH): Dasha Reddy is a PhD student at Ulster University studying the right to health in post-conflict contexts. She is in her second year of the programme at Ulster’s School of Law.
Originally from South Africa, but having grown up in Ontario, Canada, Dasha completed her BSc in Life Sciences at Queens University. During her undergraduate degree, she developed an interest in global health. This led her to begin a Master of Public Health (MPH, with a thematic focus in Global Health) in 2018 at Simon Fraser University.
During her MPH, Dasha became particularly passionate about migration and post-conflict contexts. She had the opportunity to work with the United Nations Refugee Agency in Malaysia in the second year of her studies and decided to complete her thesis in collaboration with them. Inspired by their work, her thesis examined the facilitators and barriers to HIV medication adherence among forced migrants living with HIV. This work motivated her to consider how organisations, like UNHCR, can engage with other disciplines to improve health among those in post-conflict contexts.
Determined to pursue interdisciplinary approaches to health justice, Dasha went on to complete a Master of Advanced Studies in Transitional Justice, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law (MTJ) at the Geneva Academy. During this time, she deepened her understanding of the legal frameworks relevant for health advocacy. Her thesis, Post-Conflict Rehabilitation for Victims of Micro to Macro Health Violence, was awarded the Best MTJ Thesis Prize for her novel and integrative work.
Following graduation, Dasha worked for Médecins Sans Frontières in Cape Town, South Africa, on the Digital Health Promotion Unit. In her role as an Analysis and Capacity Building Manager, Dasha worked on a wide array of health promotion campaigns in various countries. She credits this role with exposing her to the scope and magnitude of global health inequities, which served to reinforce the need for interdisciplinary research.
Dasha’s PhD research examines ways to support post-conflict communities in realising their right to health in situations where the historical impacts of violence persist. Her work looks at the case of South Africa and explores how historically deprived communities exert agency over health needs that have evolved from apartheid. Dasha’s work brings together the fields of public health, transitional justice, and human rights law to create an interdisciplinary-informed framework in collaboration with community health organisations that can be operationalised to decrease health inequities within South Africa.
Following her time at Ulster University, Dasha hopes to return to Canada and apply the learnings from her PhD through a career in health advocacy.
