James Trostle came to Trinity after helping manage a large international health program at the Harvard Institute for International Development from 1988 to 1995, and working as a Five College Professor and Founding Director of the Five College Program in Culture, Health and Science between 1995 and 1998 in Massachusetts.  From 2001-3 he was also Professor at the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and in 2016 he was named a Visiting Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Chile.  He has served for 13 years on various advisory groups for the World Health Organization.  His research interests are in epidemiology and global health, and he has been a coprincipal investigator on NIH and NSF-funded projects in coastal Ecuador since 2002.

Trostle's teaching often joins the classroom with a variety of Hartford communities and organizations.  He stresses writing for public audiences as well as writing for discovery.  As an instructor long ago for NOLS and Outward Bound, he has likened his courses to academic Outward Bound experiences, where he tries to create challenges that are real but surmountable.