Students in the UCSF Medical Anthropology & History of Health Sciences Program
Medical Anthropology PhD students
History of Health Sciences PhD students
2005-2006 Cohort
2007-2008 Cohort
2009-2010 Cohort
Medical Anthropology PhD Students:
Nick Bartlett (MA International Affairs and Public Health, Columbia University)
Geographic Areas of Interest: China, Indonesia
Research Areas of Interest:
Addiction, citizenship, techniques of public health, global pharmaceuticals, biosociality, science studies.
Liza Buchbinder (MS, Health and Medical Sciences)
Geographical Area of Interest: Togo, West Africa
Research Areas of Interest: child labor and migration, child trafficking.
 Ugo Edu (BS Physiological Sciences, UCLA; MPH International Health, Morehouse School of Medicine)
Geographical Areas of Interest: Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Africa and her diaspora
Research Areas of Interest: conceptualizations of sex, gender and sexuality, sexual and reproductive health, international health, colonial impacts on African societies, especially as it relates to sex and sexuality.
Mark Fleming (BA Biology, Oberlin College; MS Sociology, University of
Wisconsin--Madison)
Geographic Areas of Interest: United States Research
Areas of Interest: Anthropology of science, technology and medicine; neuroscience, psychiatry, and theories of affect.
 Shana Harris (MA Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder)
Geographic Areas of Interest: Latin America, Argentina
Research Areas of Interest: drug use; harm reduction; science and technology studies; health movements and interventions.
Dissertation Reseach: Out of Harm’s Way: The Politics and Practice of Harm Reduction in Argentina
Email
 Benjamin H. Hickler (MA Anthropology, U. of Colorado)
Geographic Areas of Interest: Lao PDR, Cambodia, Viet Nam, West Australia
Research Areas of Interest:Anthropology of health development; Animal-human relations; Anthropology of science, technology, and medicine in (post)colonial contexts; Political Anthropology--transnational biosecurity arrangements, citizenship, biopolitics, expertise, territory, and the persistence of sovereignty; RNA viruses.
Dissertaton Title: Politics of Animal Health - Biosecurity and Poverty Alleviation in the Lower Mekong
Email
Robin T. Higashi (MA Anthropology, UC Berkeley)
Geographic Areas of Interest: Urban U.S.; Ethnic Minorities
Research Areas of Interest: children's health; moral and political economies of health in philosophies of self-care; healthcare decision-making; health citizenship; poverty and immigration.
Email
 Stephan Kloos (MA, Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria).
Geographic Areas of Interest: India, Himalaya, Tibet
Research Area of Interest: Anthropology of Ethics; Postcolonial Science Studies; Medical Anthropology; Governance and Ethical Citizenship; Tibetan Medicine; Transnationalism and Globalization.
Dissertation Title: Tibetan medicine in Exile: the ethics, politics, and science of cultural survival
Stephan Kloos' publications
Email
 Kelly Knight (MEd, Education, Harvard University)
Geographic Areas of Interest: Urban US
Research Areas of Interest: clinical, epidemiological, and ethnographic approaches to the homeless mentally ill; the construction of gender in drug-sex economies; HIV stigma, sexual behavior, and serostatus identity; the relationship between structural, interpersonal and everyday violence; and, the social construction of trauma, mental illness, and health among poor women in U.S. urban settings.
 Suepattra May (MPH, University of Washington)
Geographic Areas of Interest: United States; previous work in Thailand and West Africa
Research Area of Interest: Breast and Gynecologic Cancers, Sexuality, Subjectivity, Public Health, STS, New Media Technologies
Dissertation Title: Whatever She Wants: An Ethnography of American Women, Modern Love, Sex and the Internet
Email
 Rachel Niehuus (MD/PhD Candidate)
Geographic Areas of Interest: West Africa, Central Africa
Research Areas of Interest: Health education in conflict setting
Email
Betsy Pohlman (MA Anthropology, U of Arizona)
Geographic Areas of Interest: United States
Research Areas of Interest: Aging, Alzheimer's Disease, Down Syndrome, Advocacy and Activism, Social Policy in the Making, Bioethics, Governance and Governmentality, Citizenship
Dissertation Title: The Ethics and Politics of Caring and Curing: The Case of Alzheimer's Disease and Down Syndrome
Email
Na’amah Razon (BA/BS Anthropology/Biological Sciences, Stanford University; MD/PhD Candidate)
Research Areas of Interest: Intersection of power, environmental policy, and public health; marginalized and migrant communities; citizenship; infectious disease; water-politics.
Geographic Interest: Middle East; South India.
China Scherz (BA, UC Berkeley)
My work examines the negotiation of emergent ethical and moral dilemmas involved in the relationships between children, families, and institutions. Through research on unmarried motherhood in Ireland, the use of scientific form in the US Child Protective Services programs, and State and NGO efforts to implement the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Uganda I hope to describe several modes by which families relate to institutions and to develop a framework for analyzing how individuals and institutions make complex ethical decisions.
Geographic Areas of Interest: Sub-Saharan Africa, Urban US, Ireland.
Dissertation Research: Childhood and the Ethics of Care: Child Rights and Orphan Support NGOs in Uganda
Email
Jeff Schonberg (MA Anthropology, San Francisco State University)
Geographic Areas of Interest: urban United States, Latin America and Indonesia.
Research Areas of Interest: U.S. on homelessness, gangs and inner-city violence, the drug economy and HIV; social upheaval and street children in Latin America; 1965-1968 massacre. Bali, Indonesia, issues of photography, the representation of suffering, globalization and neoliberalism.
Carolyn Sufrin (MD, Johns Hopkins University; MA, Anthropology, Harvard University)
Geographical Areas of Interest: United States Prison System
Research Areas of Interest: Reproductive health care politics and access for incarcerated women. Pharmaceutical marketing and medical education. Family Planning in Iran.
Allison Tillack (MA Anthropology, University of Arizona, MD/PhD Candidate)
Geographic Areas of Interests: United States
Research Area of Interest: anthropological perspective of the process by which new medical technologies are made a part of routine clinical practice; the process of collaboration between basic scientists and clinicians that affects the development, integration and stabilization of various technologies that impact the production of medical knowledge.
History of Health Sciences PhD Students
Note: The History of Health Sciences and Medical Anthropology programs admit their cohort of PhD students in alternating years. The 2005/6 History of Health Science group represents the first cohort for this new PhD program.
Akhil Mehra Email (MD, University of Pittsburgh, M.Phil History of Medicine) was born and raised in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . He attended Johns Hopkins University and graduated with a B.A. degree in the History of Science Medicine and Technology. After his undergraduate degree, he had a stint in the U.K. at the University of Cambridge where he earned his M.Phil from the Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine. Without pause (although probably needing one), he commenced upon medical training and got his M.D. at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A distaste for freezing rain and grey winters brought him to California to do his residency training in psychiatry at UCSF. Having recently finished his residency he is excited to be picking up the thread of historical training yet again.
 Niki Nibbe Email (MA Health and Society, Linköping University) She is interested in historical study of health delivery models, health activism during the 1970s, and the role of communities (on the local, state, and international level) in regard to the health of their populations. Her recent work has focused on acupuncture in the West, and on public health in Cultural Revolution China.
 Elena Conis Email (BA Biology, Columbia University; MS Public Health, UC Berkeley; MJ Journalism, UC Berkeley)
Geographic Areas of Interest: US, North America
Research Areas of Interest: history of public health in the US; scientific debates in public health; environmentalism and health; vaccination politics; global health
Dissertation Title: Calling the Shots: A Social History of Vaccination in the US, 1968-2008
Rebecca Kaplan Email Rebecca Kaplan received her BS in biological sciences, and history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University (2004). At Carnegie Mellon, she worked on issues of biodefense, zoonosis, and disease prevention amongst injection drug users. She went on to completed a MS in epidemiology at University of Texas School of Public Health (2006). For her MS thesis Rebecca focused on federal policy concerning teenage pregnancy and the rate of teenage pregnancy in the United States. Her current interests include animal disease and zoonosis, United States health policy, biological weapons, and biodefense.
Aimee Klask Email Aimee received her BA from UC Berkeley and her MA from San Francisco State. Her research interests include the intersectionality between the history of public health and therapeutic medicine, gender bias in medicine, the influence of the market economy on perceptions of health, and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Her dissertation will explore the history of the therapeutic uses of human growth hormone in the United States during the 20th Century.
Sheila Brar Email (BA Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine; MPH Health Policy, Columbia University)
Geographic Areas of Interest: US
Research Areas of Interest: History of Public Health in the US; Role of Medicine and Addiction in Public Health; Tobacco; Smoking and Health
Dissertation Title: How a habit became a disease: Tobacco Use and Addiction in the US, 1964-1988.
 Heather Dron Email (MPH, Emory University) has worked on a range of research project, studying human population genetics using a gene involved in immunity (HLA); interviewing Latina women about family planning educational materials, researching HIV prevention and transmission among discordant couples in Africa, and writing her master’s thesis on hypothetical HPV vaccine acceptability among mothers attending health clinics in La Paz, Bolivia. She is intrigued by the emergence of infectious disease, including historical patterns of disease transmission and human efforts to control and prevent spread. In particular, she is focusing her research on the contemporary history and ethics of biomedical interventions used to prevent and treat HIV in Brazil.
 Jethro Hernandez Berrones Email (MPhil in Philosophy of Science UNAM)
A mexican student, Jethro, after his BSc, went through some high school teaching (5 years in a mexican public school) while doing his MPhil. During the process of writing his thesis he realized that his passion is History of Medicine. He is interested in the History of Alternative Medicines, particularly homeopathy, and their relationship with the people and the state.
 Kevin Moos Email (MPhil in History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Cambridge) For his MPhil thesis Kevin focussed on the scientific and political activities of Spanish psychiatrists during the Spanish Civil War along with the French and German physicians that served as their primary influences. Along with his academic studies, Kevin has worked on several UCSF research projects, including fieldwork on the health of Spanish speaking migrant workers in San Francisco and a clinical project developed to better understand the health of formerly incarcerated individuals. In addition to his previous research, he is interested in public health, the history and development of international health institutions, and the use of historical analysis and social science research methods to understand and improve healthcare. In his free time he enjoys music, literature and travel.
|
