The Frontier of Anthropological Research: The Anthropology of Illness and Health

This course gives a comprehensive introduction to a specific area of contemporary anthropological investigation. Current research trends and recent theoretical developments are explored through critical discussions with emphasis on anthropology's evolving engagement with the selected field. The course offers a unique opportunity to be acquainted with diverse aspects - methodological, epistemological and theoretical - of the research process, aspects that lie at the very basis of anthropological analysis and practice, and of ethnographic production.

Course theme spring 2026

Biomedicine is currently a dominant mode of understanding, and caring for, our bodies. Anthropology, however, has also shown that biomedicine is certainly not the onlyway in which people conceptualise illness and health. Socio-cultural frameworks, more traditional modes of healing and spirituality, and subjective dimensions of experience all shape what it means to be healthy or sick. These aspects interact with biomedicine in often surprising ways, making health and illness a dynamic and rich topic for anthropological inquiry. This course is a short introduction to some of the key questions driving current medical anthropology. What are bodies made of, and what makes a body healthy or sick? How do anthropologists balance subjective, collective, and biomedical frameworks in conceptualising care and treatment? How do anthropologists analyse structural factors, such as the role of states, capitalism and pharmaceutical companies in shaping health and health and illness? What lessons can anthropology offer for our own understandings of health, as well as for those hoping to work in the medical field?

A student who has completed the course should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

• provide an overview of the field of study addressed in the course, with particular reference to its history and theoretical and methodological debates in social anthropology

Skills

• explain the current state-of-art of research in the field of study addressed in the course
• explain the various methodological and theoretical considerations that must be taken in order to further develop the field of study

General competence

• apply key concepts and perspectives from the course and its field of study independently, in the understanding and analysis of local and global processes
• apply an understanding of the correlation and difference between empirical data, theory and analysis in text production