About the founder

Dr Sima Barmania is the Founder and Director of Potatoes for Peace. She is a British medical doctor in global public health based between London and Kuala Lumpur. She comes from a diverse cultural background; born in East London, with a South African father, Mauritian mother, both of Indian ancestry from a Muslim background. She is an independent global health consultant, freelance writer and an honorary research associate at University College London, Institute of Education.

Dr Sima Barmania is qualified in medicine from Queen Mary University of London with an intercalated degree in community health sciences and undertook her Master’s in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, worked clinically for a couple of years before branching into global health. Sima has a longstanding interest in how religion and culture influences health, especially the social determinants of health and focussed on an aspect of this for her PhD in Public Health at the United Nations University- International Institute of Global Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in collaboration with the National University of Malaysia, completing in 2016. Sima had a long running blog in the Independent where she wrote about global health, peace and social issues and writes freelance for the Lancet medical journal and the World Health Organisation. She is a keen traveller, principally interested in people, learning about the myriad of different cultures and ways of living that exist and ultimately, the commonalities that we all share.