CURRENT POSITION
- Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Connecticut
- Director of the Research Program on Global and Human Rights, University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute
EDUCATION
- NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow, Global Health & Social Medicine — Harvard Medical School
- PhD, Anthropology — Emory University
- MPH, Global Health — Emory University
- BA, English & Religion — Case Western University
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Willen is a medical and sociocultural anthropologist who works as an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and also serves as Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the university’s Human Rights Institute. Her current research explores how different idioms of social justice mobilization (such as health equity, human rights, and humanitarianism) are employed by various actors in their efforts to promote health. Her other research interests include critical perspectives on migration and health; clinical education; embodiment and experience; and moral concepts like “dignity” and “deservingness.”
Off of these concepts, Willen co-Founded the Pandemic Journaling Project, a combined journaling platform and research study about the lived impact of COVID-19, and is the Principal Investigator of ARCHES: the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study, an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods study of how people in the United States think about health, fairness, and social interconnectedness (“health-related deservingness”).
Willen’s work has received support from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among other sources. A former Member-at-Large of the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology, she is a current editorial board member for Social Science & Medicine; Social Science & Medicine-Mental Health; Culture, Medicine, & Psychiatry; and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Additionally, her first book Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel Margins (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), has won multiple awards, and she is a two-time recipient of the Rudolf Virchow Prize from the Critical Anthropology of Global Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology.
email: sarah [dot] willen [at] uconn [dot] edu
PUBLICATIONS
Books
- (2019) Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- (2011) Shattering Culture: American Medicine Responds to Cultural Diversity. Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sarah S. Willen, Seth Hannah, Ken Vickery, and Lawrence T. Park (eds). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
- (2010) A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities. Byron Good, Michael M.J. Fischer, Sarah S. Willen, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good (eds.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
- (2007) Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context. Sarah S. Willen (ed.). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Articles
- (2022) Colleen C. Walsh, Sarah S. Willen, & Abigail Fisher Williamson. Learning to See Racism: Catalysts of Perspective Transformation among Stakeholders in a Regional Health and Equity Initiative. Journal of Population Health Management and Practice.
- (2021) Willen, Sarah S., Nasima Selim, Emily Mendenhall, Miriam Magaña Lopez, Shahanoor Akter Chowdhury, Hansjörg Dilger, and the Global Migration Working Group. Flourishing: Migration and Health in Social Context. BMJ-Global Health. 6:e005108.
- (2021) Cele, Lindile, Sarah S. Willen, Maydha Dhanuka, Emily Mendenhall. Ukuphumelela: Flourishing and the pursuit of a good life, and good health, in Soweto, South Africa. Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health. 1: 100022.
COMPILED BY: Elizabeth Chong, Emory College, 02/07/2022