Zoé Samudzi University of California, San Francisco, USA

Zoé Samudzi received her MSc in Health, Community and Development (Department of Social Psychology) from the London School of Economics in 2014. Since the completion of her postgraduate studies, she has been engaging in work with transgender women of color in relation to HIV prevention strategies as the project coordinator of Sheroes at the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at the University of California, San Francisco. Her own academic work and interests revolve around hegemonic gender constructs, specifically in South Africa, as they drive poor health outcomes in gender and sexual minority communities. Despite specific regional interest, she is also deeply interested in social epidemiology and HIV prevention and intervention implementation in the United States, particularly among marginalized communities of color. She is also interested in structural ignorance and the development of participatory methodologies that center and foreground marginalized community knowledge and understandings within academic and policy discourses. She is a 2016-2017 recipient of the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship and is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of California, San Francisco.