Julia Smith

Dr. Julia Smith is an Assistant Professor in the College of Health Sciences at VinUniversity in Vietnam and an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. An interdisciplinary social scientist, Julia’s research interests converge around the structural determinants of health inequities, with a particular focus on healthcare access, pandemic response and the healthcare workforce. She is the author of dozens of peer reviewed articles as well as the book Conscripted to Care: Women on the Frontlines of the COVID Response (McGill Queens University Press, 2023). She co-edited Feminism and COVID: how women fare during crisis (MIT Press 2026) and is on the editorial board of Globalization and Health.
Julia has over 20 years’ experience working with health and development programs in Canada, Europe and Africa, and frequently works in consultation with government and civil society at both the local and global level. She is a Bridge Research Consortium Lead Scholar and alumni of the Rotary Peace Fellowship. In 2022, she received a Health Research BC Michael Smith Scholar Award, and her research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Gates Foundation, and others.