Tanya Fernandes

Tanya leads the Centre’s Law and Policy program, focusing on mental health policy and systems research and technical support. Her work spans developing data repositories, conducting landscape analyses, convening forums for consensus-building, and designing policy-level interventions to support decision-making at international, national, and sub-national levels.

She leads the Keshav Desiraju India Mental Health Observatory (IMHO), an open-access data initiative on mental health laws, policies, and services. She has also led projects with UNESCO and the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office, facilitating consultations on regional priorities such as rights-based reforms, climate change, and deinstitutionalisation. In a consulting capacity, Tanya has provided technical support to the Ministries of Health in Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Guyana, and Suriname on mental health policy development and capacity building, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization.

Tanya is currently a doctoral student in Health Sciences at the University of Lucerne and holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington.

Outside of work, she is a nature enthusiast and a lover of literary fiction and podcasts on history and geopolitics.