Professor Emerita Catherine Campbell is an LSE Fellow in Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science.

Her work focuses on the role of various forms of community mobilisation (ranging from small scale community mobilisation to various forms of political activism and global social movements) in facilitating health-enhancing lifestyles, health service access and adherence to medical advice and treatment – as well as in tackling global health inequalities and in driving wider emancipatory social change. Her specialist foci have included HIV/AIDs, mental health and women’s health in several LIC and MIC countries around the world, especially in Africa.

Campbell she is currently conducting research into feminist activism and the domestic violence response in the UK, as well as examining the way in which changing times are opening opportunities for new forms of collective agency, expecially in the  area of public health activism. She also has a particular interest in the politics of care. She serves on various expert groups e.g. she is a commissioner on the current Lancet Commission for Gender and Global Health.

She has co-authored over 200 peer reviewed academic publications. Her book Letting them die: why HIV prevention programmes fail was described by the New England Journal of Medicine, as “a remarkable book … trenchant, troubling, meticulously reasoned and compellingly written ... a signal example of why Campbell is considered one of the foremost researchers on HIV and AIDS.” The Times Literary Supplement said: “Campbell’s study is the best book yet written on the struggle to control HIV………..theoretically powerful, thoughtful and vivid, this is a superb ethnography of both the epidemic, and of a brave attempt to stop it.”

Campbell has been recipient of the British Psychological Society award for Distinguished Career Contribution to Social Psychology for her work on health inequalities, the American Sociologists AIDS Network Career Contribution Award for her contribution to understandings of the social dynamics of HIV/AIDS, and the South African Association of the Advancement of Science Award for distinguished contribution by an international scientist to understandings of health in southern Africa. 

Campbell was Head of the LSE’s Department of Social Psychology between 2013 and 2016, and first Head of the new Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science from 2016 to 2017.