Professor Mark Tomlinson is the Co-Director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research in the Department of Global Health at Stellenbosch University. His scholarly work has involved a diverse range of topics that have in common an interest in factors that contribute to compromised maternal health, to understanding infant and child development in contexts of high adversity, to understand the impact of maternal depression on infant and child health and development, and how to develop community based interventions to improve health and development across the life course. He has received research grants from the Conrad N Hilton Foundation; World Health Organization; Grand Challenges Canada, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); National Institute of Drug Abuse (USA); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); the Department for International Development (DfID -UK); Innovation Edge; Ilifa Labantwana, DG Murray Trust, UBS Optimus, and UNICEF. He has been a consultant for the World Health Organization, USAID, and Conrad N Hilton Foundation. He was one of the co-ordinating writers of the World Health Organization document – ‘Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development: A Framework for Helping Children Survive and Thrive to Transform Health and Human Potential. He received the Chancellors Award for Research at Stellenbosch University in 2015. He was elected as a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa in 2017. He has published over 220 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited two books and published numerous chapters. He is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Medicine; is an Associate Editor of Infant Mental Health Journal, and is also on the Editorial Board of Psychology, Health and Medicine.