Dr Doreen Montag, MA DPhil

Profile

I am a Senior Lecturer in Global Public Health at the Centre for Public Health and Policy. I hold a Magister Atrium in Altamerikanistik from the Free University Berlin and a DPhil in Anthropology from Oxford University. Before coming to QMUL, I have been working as a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the Australian National University, convening the MSc programme in Culture, Health, and Medicine. Following, I have been a Prometeo Researcher at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In addition, I have been with a DAAD Rückkehrerstipendium at the Institut für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie at the Free University of Berlin.

At QMUL, I have been coordinating our MSc and MRes programmes in Global Public Health between 2016-2019. I have been developing the teaching areas in Climate Change and Global Health Policy, Ecological Global Health and Planetary Health and International Health Policy at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Together with colleagues from Geography and Politics I am co-organising the Queen Mary Latin American Network (QMLAN). At the Faculty for Dentistry and Medicine at QMUL, I am a member of the  Environment and Health Steering Group. I am an Honorary Extraordinary Professor at the Universidad Nacional Intercultural de la Amazonia (UNIA) in Pucallpa, Peru.

Teaching

Research

Research Interests:

My research interests encompass biodiversity, climate change and health from a Planetary Health and policy perspective. I have collaborated on publications in relation to biodiversity, vector borne diseases and climate change and climate change adaptations to health. A recent growing research interest of mine is the human gut microbiota and its interrelationship with other species’, soil, water and air microbiota and how this is impacted by the Anthropocene.  I am currently the Principal Investigator (MRC-Newton Fund) of the ARPEC: Anaemia Research Peruvian Cohort, a bilateral research project with Peru, analysing the eco-bio-socio-political factors influencing childhood anaemia in three regions of Peru. In addition, I am researching on regional health policy with a particular focus on the Amazonian region through my Associate Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS. 

Publications

Aracena, Stephanie, Marco Barboza, Victor Zamora, Oswaldo Salaverry, and Doreen Montag. "Health system adaptation to climate change: a Peruvian case study." Health Policy and Planning 36, no. 1 (2020): 45-83. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czaa072

Austvoll, Cecilie Torp, Valentina Gallo, and Doreen Montag. "Health impact of the Anthropocene: the complex relationship between gut microbiota, epigenetics, and human health, using obesity as an example." Global Health, epidemiology and genomics 5 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1017/gheg.2020.2

 Barboza, Marco, Marco Barboza Medina, and Doreen Montag. "Melancolía y Equilibrio: Una homeostasis del siglo XXI." YACHAQ 5, no. 1 (2022): 79-95. https://revista.uct.edu.pe/index.php/YACHAQ/article/view/219

 Montag, Doreen, Carlos A. Delgado, Consuelo Quispe, David Wareham, Valentina Gallo, Jose Sanchez-Choy, Víctor Sánchez et al. "Launching of the Anaemia Research Peruvian Cohort (ARPEC): a multicentre birth cohort project to explore the iron adaptive homeostasis, infant growth and development in three Peruvian regions." BMJ open 11, no. 5 (2021): e045609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045609

Montag, Doreen, Marco Barboza, Lizardo Cauper, Ivan Brehaut, Isaac Alva, Aoife Bennett, José Sanchez-Choy et al. "Healthcare of Indigenous Amazonian Peoples in response to COVID-19: marginality, discrimination and revaluation of ancestral knowledge in Ucayali, Peru." BMJ global health 6, no. 1 (2021): e004479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004479

Supervision

I am currently supervising Vidhya Sasitharan who is working on “Examining and understanding the role of social determinants of health in unintentional pesticide poisoning within smallholder farming systems and assessing the barriers in implementing alternatives to pesticides.” Her PhD is financed through the Economic and Social Research Council through the London Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Doctoral Training Programme. Vidhya started her PhD in September 2020.

I am interested in supervising dissertations in relation to planetary health, national climate change and health adaptation policies and interventions, Amazonian regional integration in relation to health and biodiversity conservation. Indigenous peoples’ health issues across the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon and Andes.