Cathy Zimmerman

Early life and education Zimmerman completed her undergraduate studies at UCLA. She moved to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for graduate research. From 1993 to 1998, Zimmerman worked in Cambodia, building the first non-governmental organisation that focussed on eliminating domestic violence. Her PhD evaluated the health of trafficked women in Europe and was supervised by Charlotte Watts.

Research and career Zimmerman is a social scientist who studies human health in migration, violence and health. She worked with Charlotte Watts and Heidi Stöckl to create the Gender Violence and Health Centre. In the early days, they focussed on intervention research. With a randomised control trial, they showed that by empowering and supporting women, and by giving them livelihood options, they more than halved their experiences of violence.

Between 2000 and 2003, Zimmerman led a qualitative study on women's trafficking in the European Union. She followed this up with an investigation into over 200 women who had been forced into sex work through trafficking. These studies are the largest studies on human trafficking. She found that these women were injured and in pain, with almost 60% experiencing PTSD when they entered post-trafficking services. In an attempt to support the mental health of women who had been trafficked, Zimmerman worked with Amnesty International to provide more compassionate care to people in their "recovery period". Specifically, she created policies supporting people who had been trafficked, giving them up to 90 days to cooperate with criminal investigations. In the United Kingdom, the Home Office extended the reflection time to 45 days. She developed a way to measure child domestic work, and a framework for domestic work interventions.

Selected publications