Green Templeton College recently hosted a powerful event, building on the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences 12-part 'Decolonising Global Health' blog series. The event, titled Beyond the Ivory Tower: A Dialogue on Decolonising Global Health, brought together respected voices from the Global South to share their experiences, challenge entrenched power dynamics and explore practical strategies for creating more equitable health systems.
Held on Friday 25 April 2025 in the EP Abraham Lecture Theatre and streamed online, the dialogue built on the momentum of a previous panel discussion held at Green Templeton last September, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Healthcare Leadership in Times of Crisis. This time, the focus sharpened on the structural injustices that continue to shape global health research and practice – and how individuals and institutions alike can begin to dismantle them.
Maju Brunette (The Ohio State University and Oxford University MSc in Global Healthcare Leadership student) Shashika Bandara (McGill University), and Neelika Malavige (University of Sri Jayewardenepura) led an open and engaging discussion. Early in the event, Maju challenged the audience to reflect deeply, asking, ‘What does it really mean to decolonise global health?’
She emphasised the need for community-engaged approaches and solidarity across borders, drawing on a graphic from the blog series that highlighted addressing power asymmetries as essential to genuine progress.
A theme of the evening was the need for a two-step approach: first, to introspect on personal and institutional biases; and second, to actively challenge systemic structures that perpetuate inequality. Neelika Malavige offered real-world examples from her work in Sri Lanka, where limited resources and infrastructure make managing infectious diseases such as dengue and tuberculosis particularly challenging. ‘Still today, we do not have answers to major diseases because of longstanding inequalities’, she pointed out, illustrating how medical challenges are deeply intertwined with social and political ones.