Lecturers
Anne Golaz, MD, PhD
Dr. Golaz is a physician and epidemiologist. She holds an MD and a doctorate in medicine (DrMed) from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and a master of public health from the University of Washington. She completed the Epidemic Intelligence Service program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the CDC Preventive Medicine Residency program at the Indian Health Service in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was a visiting epidemiologist for the CDC and a regional immunization advisor seconded to the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia in Kathmandu; the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office in Cairo; and the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office in New Delhi. Dr. Golaz teaches public health in humanitarian emergencies at the University of Geneva’s Center for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action and at the Global Studies Institute. Before joining the university in 2012, she was a UNICEF senior health advisor for humanitarian emergencies. She has contributed to many scientific publications.
Claire Sommerville, PhD
Claire is a medical anthropologist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge and a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She has researched non-communicable diseases, social determinants of health, ageing, decision-making and m-health technologies, ethics, nested-RCT studies, health policy, governance, and security and is researching neglected tropical diseases and non-communicable diseases in Peru, Nepal, and Mozambique. She is executive director of the Gender Centre and research associate in the Global Health Centre at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies where she also teaches applied research and executive education. Previously, she taught the qualitative research methods and coordinated research on gender, land, and the right to food; consulted for the UN; and was senior social scientist developing and testing health technology prototypes at Intel Digital Health’s Technology Research of Independent Living Centre at Trinity College Dublin. Her most recent publications appear in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, The European Journal of Public Health, and Aging and the Digital Life Course.
Nicolas Bertholet, MD, DrMed
Nicolas has an MS in epidemiology from Boston University School of Public Health, an MD from Lausanne Medical School, and a DrMed from Lausanne University. He trained in preventive medicine, public health, and psychiatry and psychotherapy (board certified by the Swiss Medical Association). He completed a research fellowship at the Clinical Addiction Research and Education Unit at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine and was Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Center for Mental Health Research. He is associate physician at Lausanne University Hospital’s Alcohol Treatment Center and privatdozent and senior lecturer at Lausanne University’s Faculty of Biology and Medicine. He is associate editor for the US National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Clinical Addiction Research and Education program. In 2014, he was awarded the New Investigator Award by the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. He researches screening and intervention for unhealthy substance use and has developed web- and smartphone-based screening and interventions for unhealthy alcohol use. He is involved in numerous collaborations with researchers from the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Ariel Eytan, MD, PhD
Ariel holds an MD and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Geneva. He is trained as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist specialized in consultation-liaison and forensic psychiatry. His main interests are in the cross-cultural aspects of mental disorders, the interface between mental and physical health, international psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Ariel has worked as a research assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on the cultural dimension of psychiatric classifications. He is currently senior lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and assistant professor in the forensic department of the Geneva University Hospitals. He also chairs the Swiss Federal Commission for the treatment of persons interned for life. Ariel researched trauma, depression, and mental health in post-conflict settings such as Kosovo and Rwanda and worked on the screening and diagnosis of mental disorders among asylum seekers and refugees in Switzerland. He teaches cross-cultural psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and ethics to medical students and residents in psychiatry. He is the author of approximately 65 papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Elisabeth Meur, PhD
Elisabeth holds a master’s degree in contemporary Arab and Muslim worlds from the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva. She studied political psychology at Stanford University and emotions in international relations at the University of Washington. In 2014, she completed her PhD in international relations (Academy of Louvain, University of Namur and Tocqueville Chair in Security Policies), examining the influence of resentment in the Lebanese-Syrian securitization. Her research stands at the intersection of security studies and political psychology and mainly focuses on the role of social emotions in conflict and post-conflict societies, particularly the influence of complex social emotions on security and foreign policy following traumatic events. She has conducted empirical research in Lebanon and Syria since 2006. She has been research project coordinator and lecturer at the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action and has taught research methods and research design and supervised academic dissertations.