Biography
Santhosh MR is an Asst. Professor at the Centre for Public Health, School of Social Work, TISS Guwahati Campus. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, a Master’s Degree in Socialwork and an Mphil/PhD in Social Medicine. He has done his doctoral research on liberalisation of Indian pharmaceutical industry. He is mainly involved in teaching and research on public health and related areas. He teaches Bachelor level, Masters's level, and Mphil/PhD level courses at TISS Guwahati. He co-ordinated the MASW (Public Health) programme from 2013 to 2016 and also chaired the Centre for Public health from 2016 to 2020. He has also served as the Dean of School of Social Work from 2020 to 2023. Currently he is the Chairperson of Unit for Research and Development(URD). His main research interests are Health, Vulnerability and equity issues, Trade and Public Health, Development Policy Analysis, IPR and Access to medicines, Issues in Healthcare Provisioning, Health and Gender, Political Economy of Health and Nutrition, Tribal health, Maternal and child nutrition and health and Trade and Gender. Before joining TISS he was associated with research and advocacy organisations like CHSJ, CENTAD, FRCH and TWN. He has been part of many research projects and advocacy initiatives on trade and public health; specifically on access to medicines. He has been part of many national and international multi-disciplinary, multi-site research projects such as Tracing Pharmaceuticals in South Asia (TPSA), Accessing Medicines in Africa and South Asia (AMASA) in various capacities. He has worked with Third World Network (TWN) as a Fellow in 2012. He has also been part of the following committees/Working Group Member, Institutional Ethical committee of Srimanta Sankaradeva University of Health Sciences. Member, Working Group on Access to Medicines initiated by TWN and JSA Multi Actor Working Committee(MAWC) Member, Multi-Actor Working Committee (MAWC) on Realising the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition, Voluntary Health Association, Assam (VHAA). National CSO Coalition Experts group (Nominated Member), National CSO Coalition Experts Group, Oxfam, New Delhi. Working Group Member, Working group on Essential Nutrition Intervention and Food Security. Coalition for Food and Nutrition Security (CFNS), New Delhi.