Dr Sadaf Noor E Islam is a social and medical anthropologist whose work focuses on health, inequalities and research ethics in global contexts. She completed her PhD at Lancaster University with Wellcome Trust funding, examining how life support technologies shape hope, care, and dying in intensive care units in Bangladesh. She has recently worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the MIND Group in the Department of International Public Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). Her research involves several multi-country studies, including the SHINE project on community health workers’ mental well-being in Bangladesh and Kenya. Before joining LSTM, Sadaf held research appointments at Durham and Lancaster universities, where she worked on a British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project on household dynamics during COVID-19 and on end-of-life care trajectories for patients receiving immunotherapy. Dr Islam’s work addresses key areas such as end-of-life and palliative care, cancer trajectories, community health systems, gender health and cross-cultural health practices. She brings a critical, decolonial perspective to global health, with a focus on equity and lived experience in the UK and in low- and middle-income countries.
She is highly experienced in qualitative research design, ethnography, in-depth data collection, longitudinal studies and qualitative data analysis using NVivo, underpinned by a strong commitment to ethical and sensitive research in clinical and community settings.
With more than two decades of academic experience in Bangladesh and the UK, including serving as Head of Anthropology at the University of Chittagong, she brings a cross-cultural and critical perspective to questions of health, identity, and social justice.