Alexandra Brewis

Much of my research activity is based in the Culture, Health and Environment Laboratory (CHELab) which I co-lead with three other anthropologists. I am always exploring new ideas and collaborations or branching off to learn new skills, so the research foci shifts from year to year. Here are some of our core lab projects that are ongoing efforts: 

Small World/Big Bodies is a cross-cultural, comparative, multi-phased, data-driven study of how and why stigma toward obesity is spreading globally, even as body weights increase, and the consequences of this powerful process. A long-term and diverse cross-cultural, comparative, multi-phased, data-driven study of how and why stigma toward higher body weight and “obesity” is spreading globally, and the consequences of this powerful process. Running since 2006, to date we have collected community-based data in 21 countries. New comparative research is focusing on the human aspects of the global roll-out of drugs for extreme weight loss (including “off label” use).   

The Global Ethnohydrology Study is a multi-year transdisciplinary project based in our lab using data collected with local communities from around the globe, drawing on the water expertise of Amber Wutich. The goal is to better theorize how people understand and adapt to the everyday challenges of climate changes, such as getting enough safe water, and to explicate the health and psychological impacts of that struggle. This is one of the primary projects students in our lab collaborate on, learning social science research skills, and also where we test new methods to systematically collect varied forms of cultural data.

Global Impact Collaboratory (GIC) is about testing of new methods how we know when development projects are actually “working” from the perspectives of the people on the ground they are meant to serve. The GIC was designed with Peggy Ochandarena, former Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning at Chemonics International. Our signature test-bed activities conducted in collaboration with USAID projects to date include: coastal Mozambique on climate change adaptation, Haiti on advancing access to justice, the West Bank on gender-based violence, and Zambia on wildlife conservation and community wellbeing. The GIC allows me to experiment with how anthropology can really "make a difference" in real world applications. 

Household Water Insecurity: Mitigating Biocultural Harms. What are the biocultural mechanisms that accrue harm to those living with chronic water insecurity? For example, how do social processes (like gendering and water sharing) interact with water insecurity to shape the coping options people have and the consequences of those for health and well-being? This work is conducted in collaboration with the HWISE – Household Water InSecurity Experiences Community of Practice. The most recent data collection is with the most water-vulnerable communities in Arizona in association with the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative (AWII), with fieldwork and analysis ongoing. 

Rethinking Stigma and Global Health is a major synthetic project that explores how stigma is deployed accidentally and purposefully as a public health tool, using cases of hygiene, mental health, and obesity. This is about revealing the unintended consequences for creating illness and reinforcing poverty around the globe, and identifies strategies to address it. Much of my media/public science communication work is in this area. 

Teaching Better Anthropology. Working with multiple colleagues in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, I am engaged in a long-term effort to innovate, test, and improve the teaching of anthropology as a relevant, impactful discipline. This includes collaboration on efforts to test which innovations in courses and training activities can improve structural competency of pre-health students and clarify the long-term impacts of study abroad and other forms of experiential education and how to best advance ethnographic methods training as a field, and developing a Introduction to Anthropology textbook (with me as lead author, with WW Norton Publishers) that reflects and synthesizes recent innovations across the four-fields on how an engaged and responsible anthropology should and can be done. I follow the lead of educational anthropologist Alissa Ruth in much of this work.