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Guy Harling - Professional history


Academic affiliations


Academic history

Since 2019 I have been a Sir Henry Dale fellowship funded by the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust. This fellowship allows me to explore how young South Africans are influenced in their decision-making around sexual behaviour, and to test interventions to work through social networks to increase safer sex behaviours. The core of this work has been a longitudinal cohort capturing the social worlds and health behaviours of youth in rural KwaZulu-Natal province.

In 2017 and 2018 I was involved in several studies concerning health in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically:

  • in Burkina Faso (at the Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna) interviewing a cohort of 1500 adolescents twice, and a sample of 3000 over-40s once;
  • in Tanzania (in Dar es Salaam) looking at HIV prevalence and risk amongst barmaids working in drinking establishments;
  • completing two HIV self-testing studies with 3ie in Uganda and Zambia;
  • and continuing to collaborate colleagues in South Africa, both at the Africa Health Research Institute site in Somkhele, KwaZulu-Natal and the MRC/Wits Agincourt site in Mpumalanga.
From 2014 to 2016 I was a postdoctoral research fellow in two departments of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Wtihin the department of Global Health and Population I worked with Till Bärnighausen. to complete two primary data collection projects at the Africa Centre for Population Health, now part of the Africa Health Research Institute . One compared the use of various electronic modalities for collecting census and health data in the community; the other piloted social network data collection. I also supported the implementation of the first round of the HAALSI aging and health study in South Africa, leading on its social network module (subsequently collected at 4 waves), within the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Within the department of Biostatistics I worked with a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/onnela-lab/"> Jukka-Pekka Onnela, and Victor De Gruttola to complete two studies simulating the health impacts of structured social networks.

I completed my doctoral studies in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (née Society, Human Development and Health) at the Harvard Chan School in May 2013. I have a Masters degree in Public Health from the University of Cape Town (2004-06). I worked on the cost-effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment for UNAIDS in Geneva, Switzerland (2007-08) and for the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in Cape Town, South Africa (2004-06).

Prior to working in Public Health I completed degrees in Economics at the University of Warwick (BSc; 1996-99) and McGill University (MA; 2001-03) and spent two years working for the Health practice of NERA in London, England (1999-2001).

Over four years during my doctoral studies, I worked as a lab assistant in the Instructional Computing Facility at HSPH. In this capacity I have spent time assisting numerous masters and doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows to conceptualize and realize statistical analyses for their projects, including many theses. This has honed my skills working in Stata and SAS, as well as my ability to work with others generate an analytic plan based on their needs.

Non-academically, I was President of the HSPH Student Government in 2010-11. Over four academic years I worked with students and the school administration to effect changes to academic policies that benefit both faculty and students, and in particular to improve the treatment of Teaching Assistants.

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