CHP and School of Public Health welcome new professor

4/2/2014

The Wits School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand welcomes Professor Lenore Manderson who has taken up a 50% appointment in the School, as part of the vice-chancellor’s distinguished scientists’ initiative.

Professor Manderson is a medical anthropologist, and has contributed to sociology, the social history of medicine and public health, undertaking field research, training and publishing extensively across these in Australia with immigrant, indigenous and Anglo-Australians, and in Southeast and East Asia, Ghana and South Africa.

In addition to her on-going research programme, Professor Manderson will grow the School’s post-doctoral fellowship programme, support grant-applications and will co-supervise Master’s and PhD students across the school.

Internationally renowned for her work in capacity building and training, Professor Manderson has supervised to graduation over 120 higher degree students in Australia – an exceptional number in any field – and has been a mentor to many more. She has been an honorary professor at Wits since 2004, and was Hillel Friedland Senior Research Fellow here in 2008. In 2008, she became an active member of CARTA, the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa, a unique South-South initiative conceptualised by Wits and the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Kenya.

She was most recently Professor of Medical Anthropology at Monash University (2006-2013), and prior to that Professor of Women’s Health (The University of Melbourne, 1999-2005) and Professor of Tropical Health (The University of Queensland, 2006-2013). She is the editor of the international journal Medical Anthropology, and is a member of the Scientific Technical and Advisory Committee (STAC) of TDR, the World Health Organization’s Special Programme in Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

Her new book, co-edited with Mark Davis (Monash University, Australia) and entitled Discourses in Health and Illness, will be published on 22 April 2014 by Routledge. The book offers a diverse range of empirical case studies, social theories and methodological insights that highlight the social and political implications of disclosure including on disability, sexuality and health status, and show how dominant and normative understandings of social relationships and their obligations shape understanding of acts of disclosure, enquiry and exposure.

Professor Manderson is based in the Centre for Health Policy (CHP) within the School, and became a member of the Senate in March 2014, shortly after her appointment.