Ruth Gibson

Dr. Ruth Gibson serves as an affiliated scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Her scholarly expertise encompasses global health, foreign affairs, and strategic studies, with a particular emphasis on enhancing maternal and child health in geopolitically fragile regions—nations contending with war, sanctions, and diplomatic challenges.

Dr. Gibson is presently co-leading a Lancet series on the future of foreign aid, which scrutinizes military aid, humanitarian aid, and official development assistance. This Lancet Series investigates how these forms of foreign aid can be more effectively harnessed and integrated to fulfill their intended goals, while advancing prospects for humanity's future. She collaborates with the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, partnering with the Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures to establish a universal monitoring framework for evaluating the effects of sanctions on human rights. She has contributed to reports prepared for the International Criminal Court. Dr. Gibson is a research collaborator with the Global Burden of Disease Consortium at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, supporting efforts in global health estimation and forecasting. She is a reviewer for Nature. Her research has been published in The Lancet and The Lancet Global Health, and her insights on geopolitics and human health have featured in international media outlets, including TIME magazine.

Prior to her academic career, Dr. Gibson dedicated a decade to humanitarian and global health endeavors across eight countries on five continents. Her efforts focused on fragile states confronting poverty, human rights violations, and armed conflict. She led a humanitarian foundation in Madagascar in the aftermath of a military coup, dealing with the disintegration of the healthcare system amid international sanctions on foreign aid. While living in the Middle East, she worked for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health Affairs and the Health Ministries of Yemen and Somalia on telemedicine-driven medical education, as well as cultivating diplomatic relations through shared fundamental health objectives amid periods of conflict. Throughout this decade of overseas experience, Dr. Gibson directly observed the human costs of war and geopolitical coercion, an experience that informs her ongoing research.

Dr. Gibson earned an Honors Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science from the University of Toronto, a fellowship in Medical Education from the Wilson Center at the University Health Network, and a PhD in Global Health and Strategic Studies from the University of British Columbia. She completed her postdoctoral training at CISAC from 2022 to 2025. She also undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH), Stanford Medicine, between 2022 and 2023, where she currently holds the position of visiting scholar. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Health Policy, Stanford University, from 2024 to 2025. She is conversational in English, Mandarin Chinese, and French.