Lu Chen
I am an academic researcher working at the intersection of history, politics, and political economy of international and global health. My research interests focus on health sovereignty, access to medicines, alternative pharmaceutical R&D and production, and South-South collaboration. I am currently based at the Humanitarian and Crisis Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester, contributing to the Wellcome Trust-funded project Developing Humanitarian Medicine: from Alma-Ata to Bio-tech, a History of Norms, Knowledge Production and Care (1978-2020). I am also a member of the PharmaGHaSTS Research Network: Critical Social Science of Pharmaceuticals at the Intersection of Global Health and Science, Technology, and Society, co-sponsored by Université Paris-Cité and King’s College London. Under the DHM project, my research traces the global access to medicines movement from the 1980s to the present, with a focus on alternative drug development models, particularly the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) that challenge market-driven pharmaceutical logic and reorient innovation towards public health needs. In addition, as a supporter of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs), I am also centrally involved in researching the local origins of emergency medical teams in Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.
Health Sovereignty
China, WHO and Reconfiguration of Global Health Partnerships
My first monograph working in progress entitled "Health Sovereignty: China, WHO and Reconfiguration of Global Health Partnerships" examines health sovereignty through a multi-dimensional framework encompassing juridical recognition, political and financial autonomy, epistemic independence, and material self-sufficiency. Drawing on China’s experience of exclusion from and reintegration into global health governance from 1949 to the 1980s, the book traces how socialist health innovation and indigenous capacity building, including primary healthcare delivery, knowledge production, and pharmaceutical research, development, and manufacturing, forged the foundations of genuine health sovereignty, enabling China to leverage its capacities to engage global health governance on its own terms. It offers a historically grounded framework for rethinking sovereignty and equitable global health partnerships under contemporary conditions of geopolitical fragmentation and renewed contestation of the international health order.
Publications
Chen, L. (2026). Creating State Secrets: China, Foreign Policy and Sharing of Epidemiological Data, 1949–1979. Minerva.
Chen, L. (2024). Navigating resistance in global health governance: Certification of smallpox eradication in China. Global Public Health, 19(1).