Cathy Zimmerman is a Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Europe’s leading public health university. She is a behavioral and social scientist and leads research on migration, violence, and health. She is a founding staff member of the Gender Violence & Health Centre at LSHTM. Zimmerman’s research focuses on human trafficking, exploitation, and gender-based violence.
She and her team have produced policy and service-focused evidence from multiple corners of the world, including Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Ethiopia, the United Kingdom, and multiple European countries. Zimmerman’s previous European studies generated the first data on the health risks and outcomes among trafficking survivors, while her team’s Mekong multi-site research remains the largest study on human trafficking and health to date. Previously, Professor Zimmerman, working with Kings College Institute of Psychiatry, produced evidence for England’s Department of Health to help the National Health Service respond to the health needs of people who are trafficked.
She is the author of the WHO Recommendations for Interviewing Trafficked Women; IOM and LSHTM’s Caring for Trafficked Persons: Guidance for Health Providers; and other international resource materials for law enforcement, service providers, and health professionals. Zimmerman worked in Cambodia from 1993 to 1998 where she established the first local non-governmental organization against domestic violence and carried out the first quantitative survey ever on domestic violence. She has a PhD from LSHTM and a B.A. in comparative literature from UCLA.
