Dr. Jennifer Cole

Dr Jennifer Cole is a Lecturer in Global and Planetary Health in the Department of Health Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK and part of the Geopolitics, Development, Justice and Security group within the university’s Geography Department. From September 2017 to December 2019, she was public health policy adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, UK. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based international policy think tank, where she ran the Resilience and Emergency Management programme from 2007-2017. Her programme portfolio covered risks on the UK National Risk Register from climate change, severe weather events, serious infectious disease and major industrial accidents. She holds a BA(Hons)/MA in Biological Anthropology from Cambridge University and a PhD in Computer Science and Geography from Royal Holloway funded under the Health, Human Body and Behaviour (H2B2) programme. Her PhD thesis examined the use of peer-to-peer and informal information-sharing platforms as a means of knowledge exchange during public health emergencies. She is a World Health Organization Infodemic Manager; part of the first cohort to complete training during the COVID19 pandemic, she has been a mentor on subsequent cohort training.