Sarah Willen

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 & MedicineSocial 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

Articles

COMPILED BY: Elizabeth Chong, Emory College, 02/07/2022

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