Lillian Walkover

Lillian Walkover is a critical global health scholar, jointly appointed in the Department of Communication and Global Health Program. Her research and teaching interests include the production and movement of global health knowledges, postcolonial science and technology studies, health professions training and migration, and qualitative research methods.

She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and her postdoctoral training at Drexel University. Her postdoctoral research at Drexel University with Susan Bell, PhD, is a study of the experiences and career paths of physicians who enter the US as refugees.

Dr. Walkover is the lead editor of Case Studies in Global Health: Illuminating Theory and Practice, published in 2026 by Routledge - each chapter features an ethnographic case study paired with a social theory. For more information about the book, click here, and for a direct link to the open-access digital edition, click here.

Dr. Walkover teaches a range of Communication and Global Health courses, including courses designed for students interested in the intersections between Communication and Global Health.

Recent courses taught include:

• GLBH 20: Introduction to Global Health
  
• ANSC/GLBH 148: Global Health and Cultural Diversity
  
• GLBH 215: Community Health Workers
  
• COMM 108G: Gender and Biomedicine
  
• COMM 114T: Science Communication
  
• COMM/GLBH 114W: Global Health Communication
  
• COGR 201L: Qualitative Analysis of Information Systems (“Interviewing, Grounded Theory, and Situational Analysis”)
  

In addition, as a member of the interdisciplinary Structural Competency Working Group, she has developed and led trainings for health practitioners to recognize and respond to social structures as determinants of health and illness and mentored new trainers.

• Walkover, Lillian, Jack Fukushima, Sriram Shamasunder, and Phuoc V. Le, editors. 2026. Case Studies in Global Health: Illuminating Theory and Practice. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Case-Studies-in-Global-Health-Illuminating-Theory-and-Practice/Walkover-Fukushima-Shamasunder-VLe/p/book/9781041034889 
  
  
• Walkover, Lillian, & Bell, Susan E. 2024. "Assistance Programs to Medical Licensure for IMGs Living in the US." Education for Health, 37(2), 158–163. https://doi.org/10.62694/efh.2024.25 
  
  
• Bell, Susan E., and Lillian Walkover. 2021. "The Case for Refugee Physicians: Forced Migration of International Medical Graduates in the 21st Century." Social Science & Medicine. 277:113903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113903 
  
  
• Neff, J., S. Holmes, K. Knight, S. Strong, A. Thompson-Lastad, C. McGuinness, L. Duncan, N. Saxena, M. Harvey, A. Langford, K. Carey-Simms, S. Minahan, S. Satterwhite, C. Ruppel, S. Lee, Lillian Walkover, et al. 2020. “Structural Competency: Curriculum for Medical Students, Residents, and Interprofessional Teams on the Structural Factors that Produce Health Disparities” MedEdPORTAL: The Journal of Teaching and Learning Resources. AAMC. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10888 
  
  
• Walkover, Lillian. 2019. “Translators Producing Knowledge: Where There Is No Doctor in Tamil.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. 5: 21-39. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2019.236 
  
  
• Neff, J., S. Holmes, S. Strong, G. Chin, J. De Avila, S. Dubal, L. Duncan, J. Halpern, M. Harvey, K. Knight, E. Lemay, B. Lewis, J. Matthews, N. Nelson, S. Satterwhite, A. Thompson-Lastad, and Lillian Walkover. 2019. “The Structural Competency Working Group: Lessons from Iterative, Interdisciplinary Development of a Structural Competency Training Module” in Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine, edited by J. Metzl and H. Hansen. Springer. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030105242 
  
  
• Walkover, Lily. 2016. “When Good Works Count” Pp. 163-177 in Metrics: What Counts in Global Health, edited by V. Adams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/metrics