Rate My Professor Joseph Harris

Joseph Harris is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University. He earned a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012 and holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Harris conducts comparative historical research at the intersection of sociology, political science, and global health, with a focus on the politics of health universalism and health policy development in Thailand. He is the author of Achieving Access: Professional Movements and the Politics of Health Universalism, published by Cornell University Press in 2017. He has received two Fulbright scholarships and the Henry Luce Scholarship for his research on the politics of health policy. Harris serves as Vice Chair of the International Studies Association’s Global Health Section and as Deputy Editor of the Journal of Health & Social Behavior. He is a member of the editorial collective at Studies in Comparative International Development and co-founder of the American Sociological Association’s Global Health and Development Interest Group. He previously served on the governing Council of the ASA Section on the Sociology of Development and as Associate Editor at Social Science and Medicine. Harris has consulted for the UNDP and the World Bank as a specialist on the political economy of health reform. In 2017, he received the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching award in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences. He has also served as a BU Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow and Provost’s Mentor Fellow.

Harris contributes to public discussions on global health through media outlets including National Public Radio, the Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and The Progressive. He runs the Global Health Politics Workshop at Boston University and has held additional editorial and leadership positions in academic organizations focused on medical sociology and development. His work emphasizes the role of professional movements in advancing access to health care as a right rather than charity.