Deven Gray is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Gray is a medical anthropologist with a focus on infectious disease, especially concerning mosquito-borne infectious diseases such as Zika virus and dengue fever. He has multiple field seasons of experience in the country of Belize conducting mixed-methods ethnographic and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) research on epidemic and pandemic response efforts, researching policies and interventions that influence the management or health consequences of disease. Since 2018, Gray has served as an assistant editor for the applied anthropology journal Human Organization, and recently he has gotten involved with the University of South Florida’s Center for the Advancement of Food Security and Healthy Communities (CAFSHC) to explore the effectiveness of food bank home delivery programs piloted in response to COVID-19.
David Himmelgreen is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Advancement of Food Security & Healthy Communities at the University of South Florida. Himmelgreen is a biocultural nutritional anthropologist with expertise in maternal-child nutrition, growth and development, food security, dietary change and health, and community nutrition programming. He has conducted research in Costa Rica, Lesotho, India, Puerto Rico, and the United States. He served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2014 to 2021. Since 2015, he has been involved in multiple projects addressing food insecurity in Tampa Bay. Himmelgreen is currently conducting research on a food prescription program, college student food insecurity, and diabetes self-management during COVID-19. He has over 100 publications and has received funding from NSF, USDA, Fulbright Commission, state agencies, and private and corporate foundations for research and programs aimed at reducing food insecurity and improving health.
Craig R. Janes is Professor and Director of the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. His current work focuses on the intersections of anthropogenic environmental change and global health systems, including a countrywide study of the impact of climate change on the livelihoods and health of Mongolian pastoralists, assessments of the public health consequences of global resource extraction in Mongolia and Zambia, and a coupled social-ecological systems approach to identifying and mitigating the impacts of flooding regimes on the access to essential health services in western Zambia. He has also investigated the effects of globalized health systems reform programs on indigenous health systems, access to health services, and maternal health outcomes. In addition to his work in Mongolia and Zambia, he has conducted research in the United States, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Argentina, and Samoa. He is a past Board Chair and National Coordinator of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research, a Fellow of the Balsillie School for International Affairs in Waterloo, and with his colleagues in Zambia codirects the Zambezi Ecohealth Partnership.
Thomas Leatherman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a biocultural anthropologist whose work adresses social change, inequalities, and health in Latin America and the U.S.. Work in the Yucatan of Mexico has focused on the social, nutritional and health impacts of the rapid growth of tourism-based economies, and the “coca-colonization” of diets in the Yucatan. Long term research in the southern Peruvian Andes focused on the co-constitutive nature of poverty, inequality and illness, and the links between structural violence and the political violence manifested in a 20 year civil war (1980-2000). Recent work and interests are on shifts in regional economies, food security and health in a post-conflict Peru. He co-edited Medical Pluralism in the Andes with Joan Koss and Christine Greenway (2004), and Building a Biocultural Synthesis: Political Economic Perspectives in Biological Anthropology (1998) with Alan Goodman; part of a long term theoretical interest in developing and expanding a more critical biocultural anthropology.
Jennifer Liu is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and cross-appointed in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Her work intersects with science and technology studies (STS) and global health. Her studies include ethnographic analyses of stem cell research and genetics in relation to identity, ethics, and governance in Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. More recently her work focuses on food and water security, gender, and health data use in rural Zambia. Other projects include industrial water pollution and water governance in Bangladesh, women in engineering in Canada, and HIV medication adherence in San Francisco. She serves as Co-convener of the Global Health Research Cluster at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and as a Board member of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research.
Lenore Manderson is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology in the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her work is concerned with inequality, the social context of infectious and chronic diseases in Australia, Southeast and East Asia, and Africa, and increasingly, the environment. She has published some 750 books, articles, book chapters, and reports in these and other areas, including Surface Tensions (2011), Connected Lives (edited with Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, 2020), and Viral Loads (edited with Nancy J. Burke and Ayo Wahlberg, 2021). She was awarded the Society of Medical Anthropology Career Achievement Award in 2016, and in January 2020, she was admitted as a Member of the Order of Australia.
Emily Mendenhall, PhD, MPH, is Medical Anthropologist and Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has published widely at the boundaries of anthropology, psychology, medicine, and public health and is the inaugural co-editor-in-chief of Social Science and Medicine—Mental Health. Dr. Mendenhall led a Series of articles on Syndemics in The Lancet; and she has published several books, including Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements with Trauma, Poverty, and HIV (2019), Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women (2012), and Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives (2015). In 2017, Dr. Mendenhall was awarded the George Foster Award for Practicing Medical Anthropology by the Society for Medical Anthropology. Her newest book is Unmasked: COVID, Control, and the Case of Okoboji.
Mark Nichter is Regents Professor emeritus and former coordinator of the Graduate Medical Anthropology Training Program at the University of Arizona. He holds a Doctorate degree in Anthropology as well as a master’s degree in public health, and postdoctorate training in cultural psychiatry and clinical anthropology. Mark holds joint appointments in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine and the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. One of his many areas of research is drug use, abuse, and harm reduction; the etiology and expression of dependency; and how drugs are used to manage time, respond to labor demands, enhance pleasure, establish identity, and negotiate social relations.
Charlotte A. Noble is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. She holds a doctoral degree in applied anthropology and a master of public health from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include food security, nutrition, and the experiences of people living with HIV. She has conducted research in Haiti, Costa Rica, Lesotho, and the United States. She has also served as program coordinator for two federally funded projects: The Teen Outreach Program Replication Project and the University of South Florida Maternal and Child Health Pipeline Training Program.
J. Bryan Page is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Miami. He has secondary appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociology at that institution. He has conducted transdisciplinary research on the consequences of drug use for nearly 50 years. His focus on drug using behavior has relied on ethnographic, first-hand views in the users’ natural habitats, whether on the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, the shooting galleries of Miami