Hannah Gilbert, PhD
Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine
At the close of each year, when student theses are submitted and defended, we gather as a community to celebrate our graduates. By then, Boston will have shaken off its wintry charms, and spring bursts forth, providing a verdant backdrop for our celebrations. We come together to feast, reminisce, and celebrate our students’ scholarship. For those of us who teach in the GHD program, this is also the moment when we are able to publicly reaffirm what we have quietly been doing all along: acknowledging what is unique and remarkable about each of our students.
As teaching faculty for the program’s ‘Qualitative Methods for Global Health Delivery’ course, part of my work involves introducing students to new ways of knowing. Students learn the practical skills needed to gather qualitative data. They engage in analysis that trains them to peel back the multiple social, historical, and political factors that undergird complex health problems. These are sophisticated tasks, yet they begin with something very simple: the act of listening.
Earlier today, I spoke with a second-year student in the field who just completed the collection of their qualitative data. In reflecting on their fieldwork experience, the student bravely said: “I want you to know what I value the most about this program. It is not just the content of what we were taught but the way we were taught. I learned through example the power of sincerity and the power of attention. I learned how to listen.”
Attention – true listening – is a hallmark of our program’s approach to global health delivery. Our program is centered around a commitment to ethical listening as a fundamental tenet of global health scholarship and delivery. Each year, I am taken aback by the depth of our students’ insights from the field and their ability to seek out and attend to voices that so often go unacknowledged. Our program is also uniquely committed to ethical listening in the classroom. The values and structure of the program encourage teaching faculty to uncover and support each student’s unique capacities and learning needs. The result is a classroom marked by mutual learning, buoyed by respect and care, and often filled with fun.
As the seasons change yet again, and we set our sights on welcoming our newest students into our community, I give thanks for the remarkable ties formed over these past years and look towards a new year and all the listening and learning that awaits.
August 26, 2022
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