Social epidemiologist Mishal Khan is not any stranger to pushing boundaries. As Associate
Professor on the UK’s London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2018,
she did an evaluation with colleagues that confirmed stark gender and ethnicity-related
disparities in development to senior positions on the world’s top-ranked public well being
universities, with a “double disadvantage” for minority ethnic ladies. As Richard Coker,
Emeritus Professor of Public Health on the LSHTM, observes: “Showing these uncomfortable
truths in a ground-breaking paper printed in The Lancet demanded appreciable bravery. But Mishal didn’t depart it at that. She outlined a
approach that establishments may and needs to be measured, to maneuver past paying lip-service
to bettering governance and entrenching discrimination.” 4 years later, and nonetheless
in her thirties, Khan was appointed as Professor of Global Public Health on the LSHTM
in 2022, and stays “prepared to shake up the dynamics to make issues work higher
for the marginalised”, she says.