Dr Costanza Torre

Costanza Torre is a Research Fellow at the Anthropology and Sociology Department, in the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). 

She holds a BA and MSc in Clinical Psychology from the University of Turin, and a PhD in International Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also an Affiliate Researcher at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester, and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA).

Since 2015, Costanza has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda, alongside additional research in South Sudan, Liberia, Italy, and France. In the Acholiland region of northern Uganda, she has researched the contemporary expansion of Global Mental Health thinking and practice and its intersections with humanitarian and development frameworks. Her doctoral thesis ethnographically explored South Sudanese refugees’ experiences of displacement, mental health humanitarian interventions, and food insecurity in the refugee settlement of Palabek.

Costanza’s work combines ethnographic and interdisciplinary approaches to study the socio-political dimensions of medical and mental health interventions in crisis settings. She has explored the entanglements between medical technologies and global migration regimes, and how food insecurity, chronic poverty, and structural inequalities shape experiences of distress and care. She is particularly interested in the moral and material economies that emerge around public health interventions, and in how people navigate chronic conditions amid severe socio-economic stress. Her findings have informed the work of international organisations including the World Health Organization (WHO), UNHCR, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).