In 2024, the Alliance launched its first-ever Thinker in Residence programme, an initiative designed to bring in external expertise to the Alliance Sectretariat on a temporary basis. The thinker is a critical friend – someone who can both affirm and challenge, helping the Alliance sharpen its thinking, strengthen its practice and contribute to the wider evolution of the field of health policy and systems research.
This year, the Alliance is delighted to welcome Professor Asha George as its next Thinker in Residence.
Professor George holds the South African Research Chair in Health Systems, Complexity and Social Change at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, where her work in health systems considers questions of gender, power and rights. She is widely recognized for her contributions to gender equality in global health and has collaborated with the Alliance in the past, most notably on a reader on human resources for health.
Her residency is an opportune moment for the Alliance to reflect on how it is meeting the objectives that it has set for itself. The Alliance’s strategy articulates gender equality and social justice as core values, and the organization has made efforts to that end – strong performance in Global Health 50/50 assessments, commitments to collecting gender-disaggregated data, and a longstanding requirement that research teams include at least half women. These are good foundations. But, how can the Alliance deepen its work across its five thematic areas, weaving gender and intersectionality more fully into its fabric?
Professor George’s role as Thinker in Residence speaks directly to this, helping and pushing the Alliance to reflect on its organizational culture, its influence on the field of health policy and systems research, and its potential to catalyse more equitable approaches. The Alliance is not merely a research funder – it is a connector, a steward of ideas, a convenor of policy-makers, researchers and practitioners. With that comes an opportunity to shape the values, language and practices that travel with the research it supports.
On starting the residency, Professor George noted that “it’s an exciting opportunity to work with the Alliance to go beyond standard measures to more deeply embed critical thinking and transformative practice into how they shape health systems evidence and action to advance gender equality as a core value of just health systems ”.
Her reflections have prompted renewed discussions among the Secretariat about how equity considerations show up not just in external projects but in internal processes – from how teams collaborate to how voices are elevated in convenings.
Dr Kumanan Rasanathan, Executive Director of the Alliance, welcomed Professor George. “We have strong commitments to social justice and gender equality at the Alliance, and we are looking forward to reflecting more deeply on practical actions that we can take to foster more gender-sensitive and gender-transformative health systems.”
The Thinker in Residence programme is helping create a deliberate pause in a fast-paced year. It is a moment to revisit assumptions, test new framings and imagine what the next evolution of the Alliance’s approach to gender and intersectionality could look like.