Javier’s current research focuses on the production and use of scientific knowledge in global health interventions. Much of this work centres on the control of mosquito-borne diseases in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, often in collaboration with medical entomologists. Between 2016 and 2019 he directed the project Acting in an uncertain world: mapping public health responses to the Zika epidemic in Brazil, with colleagues at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
Javier is also researching the development and governance of new technologies that might be used to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. He directs the Greenhouse Gas Removal Instruments and Policies project, focused on the international politics of large-scale carbon dioxide removal, and is part of the new H2020 project Ocean NETs, which will explore the feasibility of ocean-based interventions to tackle climate change.
Javier is also PI of the project MODEL-POL (Understanding the uses of mathematical models in policy-making), funded by the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership, and co-Investigator in the Oxford Martin Programme on Transboundary Resource Management research programme, analysing the potential for cross-border co-operation on natural resources in the eastern Nile Basin and the Jordan River Basin.
Prior research includes the ERC-funded programme BioProperty (Biomedical Research and the Future of Property Rights), which explored patterns of exchange and privatization in the contemporary life sciences. Javier continues to research the development of new therapeutics, particularly pharmaceutical products targeting global diseases of the poor.