Sharon Abramowitz, Ph.D.
Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Center for African Studies
Interests: Medical Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Violence and Conflict, Health Sector Transitions, Humanitarian Intervention, Upper Guinea/Mano River Region (Guinea, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierre Leone), Gender-Based Violence
Personal Statement: As a critical medical anthropologist, I believe that anthropology can serve as a powerful agent in observing and critiquing humanitarian action; while sustaining a moral commitment to human rights, social justice, and giving faithful accounts of human experience. My research focuses on mental health, trauma healing, and post-conflict reconstruction in several West African countries. Part of that research involves ethnographic fieldwork which explores the multi-scalar forces that shape collective and individual experience in conditions of crisis and recovery, including NGO action, local appropriation, and national and international health politics and policy. A second part of my ethnographic work uses historical materials (archival records, memoirs, and oral history) to challenge "culturalist" assertions of global humanitarian institutions regarding gender history, cultural history, and patterns of violence in African cultures (Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In my research, I engage fundamental transnational health policy problems using an interdisciplinary methodological toolkit that includes: historical and archival research, policy analysis, ethnographic observation, epidemiological data collection, and discourse analysis.
I received my MA in Sociology from Rutgers University in 2004, and completed my PhD in Anthropology at Harvard University in 2009. I held a postdoctoral teaching position at Harvard University's Department of Anthropology from 2009-2010, and was granted an NIMH-sponsored post-doctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University from 2010-2011.
Courses:
Anthropology of Humanitarian Intervention
Women in Africa
Global Health Cultures
Critical Medical Anthropology
Office:
Grinter Hall, Room 494
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611
Phone Number: (352) 273-4763 (office)
Email: sabramowitz (@ufl.edu)
Webpage: http://www.sharonabramowitz.org
