Visiting Scholar
September-October 2019

Minerva Rivas Velarde was a Visiting Scholar at the Petrie-Flom Center in Fall 2019, joining us from her position as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethics, History, and Humanities (IEH2) of the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva. Her research focuses on global health, eHealth, disability studies, and bioethics.

During her time at the Center, Minerva worked on developing an ethical framework for big data uses in health research in Switzerland. This was a collaborative effort between the University of Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. She had recently been awarded Ambizione Grant, a highly competitive advanced career support grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to work on how ICTs can enhance health care accessibility for persons with disabilities.

Minerva previously was a postdoctoral researcher in medical informatics, coordinating and implementing a capacity-building research project for junior health workers in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. At the same time, she led a research study exploring social participation and inclusion of ex-combatants with disabilities in Colombia, where she was named Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Rosario (Bogota, Colombia).

Minerva has also collaborated with various United Nations Agencies. At the World Health Organization, she collaborated issues related to health rights, indigenous rights, and disability. She later joined the International Labour Organization to work on the intersection of the world of work, indigeneity, and disability. She has also held a consultancy at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, where she drafted a thematic study on the rights of persons with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies.

Minerva’s research has been featured in academic journals including Human Resources for Health, Disability Studies Quarterly, Disability and Society, Disability and the Global South, and the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, among others. She is a member of the International Telecommunication Union study group on access to telecommunication/ICT services by persons with disabilities and other persons with specific needs. She has served as guest editor of the Bioethica Forum, an interdisciplinary journal focusing on issues in biomedical ethics and public health.

Minerva holds a Master of Science degree from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from the University of Sydney School of Medicine.