Janice E. Graham Emily Uhrig Sharon Batt Marylene Dugas Mavis Jones

Emma Varley Farah Huzair Amrita Mishra Alexander Borda-Rodriguez Kirsten Saliste

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

projects                   publications      affiliations                CV   profile

Janice E. Graham (janice.graham at dal.ca) is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As a medical anthropologist, Dr. Graham draws upon anthropology, technology assessment and bioethics to approach cultural, technical and moral issues in health. Challenges of safety, effectiveness, standardization, risk and trust figure prominently into Graham's mapping of biotechnological innovation to health inequalities. Graham's work with people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias led to an interest in the moral basis of profit when disease is seen as a market opportunity. She studies regulatory practices, diagnostic imaginaries and databases as cultural texts. Her more recent ethnographic research examines safety and efficacy in the regulation of emerging biotherapeutics and vaccines at Health Canada and internationally. She graduated in Anthropology from the University of Waterloo (BA, 1980), University of Victoria (MA, 1982), and the Université de Montréal (1997). Dr. Graham held a postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric medicine and neuroepidemiology at Dalhousie University (1996-1998), an endowed Research Chair in Medical Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (1998-2002), and received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award (1999-2002). She has been a visiting senior fellow, BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society, London School of Economic and Political Science, observer to Scientific and Technical meetings of the World Health Organization, and chairs the Health Canada Expert Advisory Panel on the Special Access Program. She is the Scientific Director of the Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit (TRRU) and the Qualitative Research Commons and Studio (QuRCs) at Dalhousie. Forthcoming research explores 21st century vaccines, including the development and introduction of a new conjugate vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa, and vaccines for pandemic influenza. Dr. Graham is also the President-Elect of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d'anthropologie (CASCA).          

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Emily Uhrig (emily.uhrig at dal.ca) received her MSc Public Health in Developing Countries from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (London, United Kingdom) in 2008 and her BA Combined Honours in Peace Studies and Geography from McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) in 2006. Her MSc dissertation work focused on the effectiveness of social and behavioural interventions in developing countries to prevent sexually transmitted infections in male clients of commercial sex workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

picture by Charles Hsuen

 

 

Sharon Batt (sharon.batt at dal.ca) is a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD program at Dalhousie University. Prior to returning to university she had appointments to the Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, and the Elizabeth May Chair in Women's Health and the Environment at Dalhousie. She is on the steering committee of Women and Health Protection and is the author of Patient No More: the Politics of Breast Cancer.

 

 

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Marylène Dugas (dugas11 at hotmail.com) is a medical anthropologist (PhD Université de Montréal, 2007). She addresses the relationship between global health, disease and society. Her research explores the transfer and acquisition of medical knowledge relating to the management of infectious diseases by communities in a West African context. She also has an interest in bioethical issues of transfer of knowledge necessary to obtain the informed consent in clinical research on the African community. Her projects are located at the junction of critical anthropology and health sciences, combining basic research and empirical research, and testing models that incorporate approaches of medical anthropology in the field of global health. Her approach will allow the type of medical and cultural anthropology she does to make a valuable contribution to the understanding of the problems associated with the introduction of biotechnology, including new vaccines, in the African context and wider international context.

Marylène Dugas (dugas11 at hotmail.com) est anthropologue médical (PhD Université de Montréal 2007). Elle s’intéresse aux rapports entre santé mondiale, maladie et société par la recherche d’une pratique clinique sensible aux caractéristiques des communautés touchées. Ses recherches explorent le transfert et l’acquisition de connaissances et compétences médicales relatives à la gestion des maladies infectieuses par les communautés en contexte ouest-africain. Elle s'intéresse aussi à la problématique bioéthique du transfert des connaissances nécessaires aux communautés africaines pour l'obtention du consentement éclairé requis en recherche clinique. Ses projets se situent à la jonction de l’anthropologie critique et des sciences de la santé, alliant recherche fondamentale et recherche empirique, et expérimente des modèles qui intègrent davantage des approches inspirées de l’anthropologie médicale dans le champ de la santé mondiale. Son approche permettra, par le type d’anthropologie médicale et culturelle qu’elle pratique, d’apporter une riche contribution à la compréhension des problématiques liées à l’implantation des biotechnologies, dont les nouveaux vaccins, en contexte africain et plus largement en contexte international.

 

 

 

Mavis Jones (mavis.jones at dal.ca) is a post-doctoral fellow who has been working with TRRU since 2006. She defended her Ph.D. (Open bodies. Legitimation, networks, and UK human genetics governance) in January 2007 at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

 

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Emma Varley (emma_varley2002 at yahoo.ca) joined TRRU with a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship in the fall of 2008. She received her Master’s degree in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (2002), and is completing her Doctoral dissertation in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Michael J. Lambek and co-supervision of Dr. Janice Boddy. In addition to having recently published two chapters, concerning her Northern Pakistani fieldwork, with Cambridge Scholars Publishing and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (Islamabad, Pakistan), Emma has authored and co-authored numerous policy and impact studies during overseas consultancies, including research on behalf of Seva Canada (Tanzania) and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (Northern Areas, Pakistan). In 2007 and 2008, she has worked as Co-Investigator on a Health Care, Technology and Place (University of Toronto) project examining the emotional and professional impacts of the 2004 tsunami for health service providers working in southern Thailand's Phang Nga District. As part of her ongoing working relationship with the Sustainable Policy Development Institute (Islamabad), Emma is a co-contributor to two book projects analysing Islamic conservatism, women’s rights, civil and sectarian conflict in Pakistan.

 

 

Farah Huzair (Farah.Huzair at dal.ca) received her PhD from The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom in 2008. Her doctoral work focused on agricultural biotechnology innovation in Central and Eastern Europe. Farah's wider interests include the evolution of science, technology and innovation systems particularly in the area of biotechnology and the impact of regulation.

 

 

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Amrita Mishra Amrita Mishra (amrita.mishra at dal.ca) received her Ph.D in sociology in 2008 from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her doctoral work, to be published in 2009, was an ethnographic study of relations of power in an Indian life-science laboratory. She has received research fellowships from the Indian Council of Medical Research, the University Grants Commission of India, and the Austrian Academic Exchange Service. After her Ph.D she was engaged in a research project at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS) of the Inter-University Research Center for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) in Graz, Austria. Her work there was a sociological analysis of personalised medicine and current research on cancer biomarkers. She also examined the evolution of the Bethesda System for standardised reporting on cervical smears. At TRRU, she is researching the sociological aspects of vaccination against HPV in Nova Scotia.

 

  

 

  

Alexander Borda-Rodriguez (alex.borda at dal.ca) received his PhD in Development Studies from the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom in February 2009 and a MA in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom in 2004. His doctoral work focused on knowledge for development and North-South interactions between experts and ‘non-experts’ in the field of social sciences. Alexander’s interests include knowledge translation, ethnography of aid, the political economy of development aid and how scientific knowledge is regulated and legitimized by international organizations in poor countries.

 

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Kirsten Saliste (Kirsten.Saliste at dal.ca) received her Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) from Dalhousie University in 2009, and her BMus from Acadia University (Wolfville, Nova Scotia) in 2005. Kirsten's interests include the issues surrounding access to electronic information, particularly electronic health information and program development and delivery for aging populations. Kirsten is currently a research assistant at the TRRU.