Professor Susan J. Elliott

Professor Susan J. Elliott is a Professor and University Research Chair in Health Geography at the University of Waterloo in Canada.  Professor Elliott has a strong scholarly record of research and scholarly publication in the area of global environment and public health.  Her research spans three areas of environmental influences on health.  First, her work explores the built environment and how our decisions around urban planning affect the health of our populations.  Second, her work explores the socially constructed environment related to how we construct risk and how that affects the health of individuals, communities, and populations.  Third, she explores the role of the physical environment – water, air, climate – on health across a range of spatial scales.  Throughout her research, Professor Elliott has a strong commitment to science-policy bridging and integrated knowledge translation.  As such, her work is transdisciplinary in approach and always partnered with knowledge owners as well as knowledge users.  The result is excellent science that has both meaning and impact.  She works extensively with NGO and policymaker partners in Sub-Saharan Africa on a range of projects including WASH, gender, aging, violence and vulnerable populations.  Her contributions to our understanding of the role of violence in the context of WASH, climate change, and building back better after COVID-19 have made substantial contributions to knowledge and in turn policy and practice.  Throughout her career, she has undertaken a range of leadership roles in both research and university administration including Director of the Institute of Environment and Health (McMaster University, Canada), Senior Research Fellow in the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Dean of Social Sciences (McMaster University) and Dean of Health Sciences (University of Waterloo, Canada).  She continues to serve the scientific community through her role as editor-in-chief of the journal Social Science and Medicine.  She is also the founder and Co-editor in Chief of the journal Wellbeing, Space & Society.  She is particularly proud to be a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and is excited about the potential avenues for her to contribute in this role.