Lori Heise is a Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), with a joint appointment in the School of Nursing. She has over 25 years of experience working in the areas of gender equity, social change and women’s economic and social empowerment. She is an internationally recognized expert on the causes and consequences of violence against women and is Co-investigator on “What Works to Prevent Violence,” a 6 year, multi-million-dollar project to reduce gender-based violence (GBV) in low and middle-income countries. Her current research focuses on preventing violence against women and children in the family, transforming gender norms, and serving as Technical Director of the Prevention Collaborative, a new global initiative designed to support evidence based GBV prevention programming in the Global South.

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, she was a Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she served as Research Director of STRIVE, a 6 country research collaboration dedicated to studying the structural drivers of HIV, including gender inequalities, stigma and criminalization, lack of livelihood options and alcohol use and harmful drinking norms. Earlier in her career she co-founded and directed two civil society organizations, one focused on SRHR and another on Women's HIV prevention needs.