Medical and Health-Related Anthropology Tracks

Arizona State University is an exceptional place to pursue advanced training in medical anthropology. Students who desire careers in the traditional fields of medical anthropology can choose to follow a track in sociocultural anthropology, in physical anthropology, or a cross-cutting integrative health-focused track.

Sociocultural Anthropology Track: The sociocultural track is interested in using theories of social difference to understand health disparities and vulnerability, with an emphasis on health in low-resource settings. Faculty area strengths include the Southwest and Arizona borderlands; Mexico and central America; tropical South America; and South East Asia. There is an emphasis on methodological rigor in training, and program faculty offer a wide range of opportunities to gain technical skills (ethnographic methods, GIS, epidemiology, research design, demography, agent-based modeling, institutional analysis, survey, social network analysis). Social justice concerns are common in this track, and there is plenty of opportunity to intersect concerns of social bases of health with other sociocultural and school strengths in the environment, migration and urban life.

Physical Anthropology Track: The physical anthropology advisory track is concerned with issues of human biology within the structure of evolution and the interface between biology and culture. Intellectual drivers of students in this track might be such questions as: How have various diseases coevolved with humans and other primates? How do cultural changes and biological relationships among people affect patterns of disease transmission? What are the genetic and environmental susceptibility factors of various diseases? Particular faculty expertise in this area includes host-pathogen co-evolution; life history and behavioral ecological approaches to health and population; health and nutrition in the deep and recent human past; mathematical epidemiology and bio-cultural approaches to human disease; and nutritional anthropology. Training options in genetics, bioarchaeology, anthropometry, epidemiology, agent-based modeling, chemistry, growth and nutrition and paleo-diet reflect some of the strengths of faculty. Students in this track are expected to develop a sophisticated handle on evolutionary theory and its application.

Cross-cutting Health Theme Track: The cross-cutting advisory track embraces the holistic—rather than sub-disciplinary—anthropological approach to the study of health. It draws on theoretical and methodological tools from a broad range of areas in anthropology and allied fields, and integrates them to understand why health varies across and within populations, and across space and time. The advisory track is designed to ‘think across’ anthropological problems relevant to contemporary human health in new ways.

Gender & Women’s Studies
Yasmina Katsulis

Nutrition
Donna Winham

Religious Studies
Miguel Aguilera

Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies
Seline Szkupinski Quiroga | Carlos Velez-Ibanez

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Medical and Health-Related Anthropology Tracks