About Marissa

For the past twenty years, I’ve dedicated my professional life to writing, researching, and teaching about the politics of global health in eastern and southern Africa. I recently completed my first book, Africanizing Oncology, which tells the remarkable story of the Uganda Cancer Institute. Before the pandemic, I was quite the globetrotter and have lived in London, Kampala, Cape Town, Kigali, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

These days, I reside in Berkeley, California where I work as a writer, university lecturer, and developmental editor. In 2020, I was a fellow at the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. Today I proudly call The Ruby my writing home here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Trained as a public health professional, historian, and anthropologist, I have a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science and African History from the University of Pennsylvania and a MHS in International Health from Johns Hopkins. In 2019, I directed the humanities and social sciences program at the University of Global Health Equity, a new health education center in the shadow of the Virunga Mountains. 

I have spoken about health and politics at a wide variety of institutions, including Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Riverside, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Washington University in St. Louis, Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Oslo, the British Institute in East Africa, and the University of Witwatersrand. My work has been supported by a variety of organizations including the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.

When I am not writing, reading, or telling you exactly what I think about decolonizing global health, I can be found teaching yoga in the Bay Area, engaging in California appreciation, or keeping in touch with friends on three continents.


Education

PhD 2015
University of Pennsylvania
History and Sociology of Science

MHS 2007
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
International Health

BA with Honors 2003
University of California Berkeley
Development Studies