Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Areas of Specialization: Medical Anthropology
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a program director and professor for medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in social science and a Ph.D. in anthropology. She also served a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health, Laboratory of Human Development at Harvard University.

Her research has specialized in many areas, including, but not limited to: cultural forensic anthropology, human organ trafficking, invisible genocides, Pope Francis, violence, death squads, and epidemics. She won the Margaret Mead Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology for her very first book, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland. Her controversial work, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, was a shocking description of Brazilian mothers having to choose which of their children lives or dies, due to extreme poverty and their life of horrific suffering. Her work in medical anthropology is critical to the field.

Her work has extended beyond research. She has served in the Peace Corps and as a “boots on the ground” activist against nuclear weapons, for the mentally ill and for the rights of street children in Brazil, among other causes. She collaborated with colleagues to launch Organs Watch, an organization for the research and investigation of human organ trafficking worldwide.

Academic Website

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