Staff profile: Professor George Ellison
Position: Visiting Professor of Health Sciences
Email: g.ellison@londonmet.ac.uk
Biography
George is a medical anthropologist with a background in comparative physiology and public health, and an interest in interdisciplinary approaches to health sciences. He holds a BSc(Hons) in zoology from the University of Aberdeen, a PhD in comparative physiology from the University of Pretoria, and an MSc(Med) in Health Promotion from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
His academic career has spanned a range of roles in South Africa and the UK, including lectureships in ecophysiology, human physiology, human ecology and a number of senior research roles. Before joining the Faculty in 2004, George was Chair in Public Health at London South Bank University, where he was the inaugural Director of the Institute of Primary Care and Public Health and Head of the Department of Primary and Social Care. Prior to that, he held the post of Assistant Director of the Institute of Education’s Social Science Research Unit.
George has served as President of the UK BioSocial Society, Treasurer of the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine and as a committee member for the Society for the Study of Human Biology. He has edited the BioSocial Society’s journal Society, Biology and Human Affairs, and has been Associate Editor of Critical Public Health and a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Human Biology.
His research has spanned ecology, physiology, nutrition, epidemiology, sociology and anthropology. He has supervised PhD students examining a range of different topics including: maternal obesity; early life determinants of chronic disease; the operationalisation of race/ethnicity in biomedical research; racial reclassification during apartheid; evaluating new roles in pre-hospital care; self-efficacy following stroke; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; and predicting prognosis in cancer.
Interests
Interdisciplinary approaches to health research and its application to interprofessional practice; the role of social identities in biomedical research; lifecourse approach to chronic disease epidemiology; social determinants of health inequalities; maternal and child health; public health and social epidemiology; medical anthropology; HIV/AIDS; evidence-based policy and practice.
View Professor George Ellison's publications at www.gthellison.info