Judyth Twigg

Judyth Twigg is professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She is also currently serving as a senior associate (nonresident) with the Russia and Eurasia Program and Global Health Policy Center at CSIS, adjunct professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University, and consultant to the World Bank, John Snow, Inc., and the U.S. federal government. She has also been a senior adviser/consultant to the Eurasia Program of the Social Science Research Council, UNICEF, and other agencies. Her work focuses on issues of health, demographic change, and health systems reform in Russia and Ukraine, as well as evaluations of health reform and communicable disease control projects across the former Soviet Union, sub-Saharan Africa, and other parts of the world. She chaired the Public Health Working Group of the Civil Society Summit that took place during the Obama-Medvedev presidential summit in Moscow in July 2009, as well as its follow-on activities through the U.S.-Russia Social Expertise Exchange. She has testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Congress and has been a member of several congressional and other U.S. government advisory groups on Russian affairs. She was one of 12 recipients of the 2005 State Council on Higher Education in Virginia’s Distinguished Faculty Award. She holds a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. in political science and Soviet studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in political science and security studies from MIT.