© 2015 Dmitry Viktorovich MIKHEL
2015 – №2 (10)
Medical anthropology in Oxford is developed within the walls of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), which is one of the five sub-divisions of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography of the University. A joint program on medical and ecological anthropology is being implemented at ISCA, along with programs on African Anthropology, Amazonian Anthropology, Visual, Material and Museum anthropology, as well as Regional, Historical and Political Studies and the British Center for Durkheimian studies. The program is led by Professor Elisabeth Hsu, one of the most authoritative European medical anthropologists of our day, a recognized expert in Chinese medicine, ethnobotany and pulse diagnostics.
Studies in medical anthropology in Oxford are conducted in several areas:
- Biocultural Variation and Obesity;
- Eastern Medicines and Religions;
- Epistemologies of Healing;
- Ethno-ecology;
- Evolutionary Nutritional Ecology;
- Human Behavioral Ecology;
- Food security and management;
- Fertility and reproduction.
Each year during the winter term (January-March) a series of scientific seminars on medical anthropology is held at ISCA. During these seminars, Oxford students have the opportunity to participate in discussions with both beginning researchers (applicants to the doctor’s degree and those who have just received it) and leading scientists representing different thematic areas and ethnographic specialties.
Over the past few years, on the basis of ISCA, seminars were held in the following thematic areas:
- Human genome, new genetics and anthropology (2002);
- Complementary and alternative medicine: anthropological perspectives (2003);
- Ethnobotany, health and healing (2004);
- Anthropology and epidemiology (2005);
- Souls and spirits in the context of healing (2006);
- Medical ecology of childhood (2007);
- Substances that strengthen the vital forces of the body (2008);
- The matter of a drug (2009);
- Transformation of the body (2010);
- Psychiatric Anthropology and Clinical Ethnography (2011);
- Anthropology of genomics and biomedical technologies (2012).
In addition, medical anthropologists in Oxford gather for additional seminars in three specialized scientific groups:
- Seminar on Eastern Medicines and Religions;
- Seminar on Fertility and Reproduction;
- Seminar on Obesity.
Oxford medical anthropologists also participate in informal discussion groups and student workshops that take place at the Green Templeton College.
(The publication was prepared by Dmitry Mikhel)
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