Dr Mona Ibrahim
Credit: John Cairns
Dr Ibrahim is an accomplished global policy adviser and researcher based at the University of Oxford, with a notable track record in shaping social and public health policy in fragile and conflict-affected countries. She currently leads a policy engagement team at the University of Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention, where she oversees high-level collaborations with civil society, governments, UN agencies, and major bilateral agencies.
She has led high-impact, evidence-based policy partnerships with the African Union-NEPAD Agency, World Health Organization, and World Food Programme – supporting the development of regional frameworks and multi-sectoral national strategies; including on adolescent-friendly health services, cash ‘plus’ interventions, and integrated humanitarian-development programming across sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr Ibrahim is an Associate Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and an International Academic Fellow at South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council. She leads a portfolio of work on building age-sensitive, gender-transformative, and adaptive social protection systems in Sudan. This includes navigating existing and potential models for ground-up social protection – led by communities and mutual aid actors. In 2024, Mona convened a series of high-level dialogues to re-imagine social assistance in conflict-affected areas, prioritising targets across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. In recognition of her leadership in this growing area of work, Dr Ibrahim received two departmental awards for excellence and was highly commended for the 2025 Social Science Impact Awards.
Originally trained as a medical doctor in Sudan, Dr. Ibrahim brings frontline clinical experience from conflict zones into her policy and research work. She also served as a UN Liaison and Research Officer in the UNDP HIV & Health team in New York – contributing to multisectoral government investment cases to improve adolescent health, HIV, and climate vulnerability. She has published in journals including the Lancet, Journal of the International AIDS Society, Global Health Research & Policy, and BMJ, and regularly contributes to multilateral policy reports.
Dr Ibrahim is a member of multiple advisory and interagency groups, including the WHO Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH), the Inter-agency Task Team (IATT) on HIV in Emergencies, and the African Union’s Calestous Juma Executive Dialogues.
Mona can be followed on LinkedIn.
Publications in peer-reviewed journals
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Cluver, L., Zhou, S., Edun, O., Lawi, A. O., Langwenya, N., Chipanta, D., Ibrahim, M., ... & Toska, E. (2024). Are social protection and food security accelerators for adolescents to achieve the Global AIDS targets?. Journal of the International AIDS Society.
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Dahab, Maysoon and AbuKoura, Rahaf and Checchi, Francesco and Ibrahim, Mona and Ndow, Mortala and Cassini, Lucia and McGowan, Catherine, War-Time Mortality in Sudan: A Capture-Recapture Analysis.
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Elsheikh, M., Ibrahim, M., Walton, Abi, & K Osman, A. (2024). Editorial - Resilience in Chaos: Sudanese Actors Shock Absorbers in Catastrophes. Sudan Journal of Medical Sciences (SJMS), 19(3), 292–295.
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Ibrahim, M., Khogali, A., Sadeldin, E., Abosam, E., Olufunmilayo., O… & Cluver, L. (2024). Colliding Wars: A Systematic Review on HIV Responses in Conflict-Affected Settings. (In press)
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Schiebinger, L., Turner, B. E., Laxminarayan, R., Fanzo, J., Cluver, L., & Ibrahim, M. (2024). A multifaceted approach to global health. Med, 5(4), 271-274.
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Khogali, A., AbuKoura, R., Abdelmagid, N., Ibrahim, M., Ratnayake, R., & Dahab, M. (2023). SWOT Analysis of Communicable Disease Surveillance in Sudan.
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Ibrahim, M., Abdelmagid, N., AbuKoura, R., Khogali, A., Osama, T., Ahmed, A., ... & Dahab, M. (2023). Finding the fragments: community-based epidemic surveillance in Sudan. Global health research and policy, 8(1), 1-4.
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Cluver, L., Rudgard, W. E., Toska, E., Orkin, M., Ibrahim, M., Langwenya, N., ... & Sherr, L. (2022). Food security reduces multiple HIV infection risks for high‐vulnerability adolescent mothers and non‐mothers in South Africa: a cross‐sectional study. Journal of the International AIDS Society, 25(8), e25928
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Khogali, A., Ahmed, A., Ibrahim, M., Karrar, K., Elsheikh, M., Abdelraheem, E., ... & Elmukashfi, E. (2022). Building power-ful health systems: the impacts of electrification on health outcomes in LMICs. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 1-14.
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Dhaliwal M, Small R, Webb D, Cluver L, Ibrahim M, Bok L et al. Covid-19 as a long multiwave event: implications for responses to safeguard younger generations BMJ 2022; 376:e068123
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Osman, A. K., Ibrahim, M., Elsheikh, M., Karrar, K., & Salih, H. (2021). Saving the Fundaments: Impact of a Military Coup on the Sudanese Health System. Sudan Journal of Medical Sciences (SJMS), 16(4), 567–574.
Policy briefs and reports
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African Union (2023) Driving Change: Inclusive Technologies and Adolescent-Friendly Health Services.
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All-Party Parliamentary Group on Malaria, UK (2019) Integrating Neglected Tropical Diseases into the Global Fund Agenda.
