Elena Jirovsky is a medical anthropologist and lead researcher in the EU Horizon 2020 project SoNAR-Global: A Global Social Sciences Network for Infectious Threats and Antimicrobial Resistance (www.sonar-global.eu) at the department of Social- and Preventive Medicine, Unit Medical Anthropology and Global Health, at the Medical University of Vienna. Since 2017, she is a permanent staff member of the department of General Practice and Family Medicine. She has conducted independent research in Burkina Faso, Austria, Chad, and Liberia. Between 2007 to 2010, she was awarded the prestigious DOC-team grant of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her dissertation deals with the current meaning of female genital mutilation/ cutting (FGM/C) in Burkina Faso.
EJ has been deployed by the Doctors without Borders (MSF) and has been a researcher in the EU FP7 project HURAPRIM - Human Resources for African Primary Health Care. In 2015 she was deployed by WHO in the Ebola Response in Liberia for 5 months.
In 2016 EJ was the senior researcher in the EU-project EUR-HUMAN: European Refugees - Human Movement and Advisory Network at the department of General Practice and Family Medicine at the Medical University of Austria. The project was nominated for the European Health Award in 2017, and the capacity building course developed in the course of this project was awarded the Veronika-Fialka-Moser-Diversity Award in the category teaching.
Central research areas include sexual and reproductive health, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), migrant health, health worker migration and working condition, as well as social science approaches and community engagement in regard to infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.
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