Catherine Panter-Brick

Professor Panter-Brick's research consists of critical analyses of health and wellbeing across key stages of human development, giving special attention to the impact of poverty, disease, malnutrition, armed conflict, and social marginalization.

She has directed large interdisciplinary projects in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. These projects include work on global public health and health interventions, mental health, psychosocial stress, disease ecology, nutrition, and human reproduction. Her focus on children in global adversity has included biocultural research with street children, refugees, and war-affected adolescents. She teaches courses on wellbeing, livelihoods, and health, disease ecology, nutritional anthropology, and medical anthropology.

She has published widely on child and adolescent health, including articles on violence and mental health in Afghanistan, household decision-making and infant survival in famine-stricken Niger, the social ecology of growth retardation in Nepali slums, biomarkers of stress in contexts of violence and homelessness, the effectiveness of public health interventions, and human rights and public health approaches as applied to international work with street children.

She has edited several books to bridge research findings into teaching practice, including Health, Risk, and Adversity (2009), Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2001), Abandoned Children (2000), Hormones, Health and Behavior (1999), and Biosocial Perspectives on Children (1989). She is currently Senior Editor (Medical Anthropology section) for Social Science & Medicine. Prior to coming to Yale, Panter-Brick was Professor of Anthropology at Durham University in the United Kingdom.