Medical anthropology students meet researchers at the intersections of society, health, and technology

Recently at the end of November, Dr Orkideh Behrouzan and Abhishek Mohanty from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, organised two separate online interactions for students on the MA Medical Anthropology and Mental Health programme. The first was with Dr Ayaz Qureshi, and the other with Dr Edwin Ambani Ameso and Dr Ruth Jane Prince: medical anthropologists and researchers studying government, third sector (NGO) and neoliberal responses to healthcare. Orkideh and Abhishek were also joined by Dr Nikita Simpson and Dr Fabio Gygi from the department. 

Dr Ayaz Qureshi, Senior Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, spoke about how the NGO ecosystem came to stand in for the government, in responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Pakistan. Gaining a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS himself, Ayaz referenced his book, AIDS in Pakistan: Bureaucracy, Public Goods and NGOs, to highlight the evolving idea of public-private partnerships and what it might mean for civil society. 

Dr Edwin Ambani Ameso, Post-Doctoral Researcher at Leipzig University and Dr Ruth Jane Prince, Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Oslo, spoke about neoliberal approaches to healthcare in Kenya. Their ERC-funded research, Universal Health Coverage and the Public Good in Africa (for which Ruth is the lead, and where Edwin’s focus on Kenya was part of the ANTHUSIA, Marie-Curie PhD training network, supported by the EU), points to how such approaches both engender and are in turn reinforced by precarity. This is also what Edwin is also seeing in his ongoing, postdoctoral project, Off the Grid: Infrastructures, Processes of Spatialization, and Drones in Africa. 

The interaction was part of the continuing series to help students better understand how society, health, and technology intersect. 

Find out more about the MA in Medical Anthropology and Mental Health programme.