August 13, 2009

IDCE professor receives African Research Fulbright

Foley to study sex health issues in urban Senegal

Ellen Foley, assistant professor of International Development and Social Change at Clark University's Department of International Development, Community, and Environment, has received a 2009-2010 U.S. Fulbright Scholar African Regional Research Program award in support of her research on the cultural, economic, and health implications of changing trends in marriage, gender roles, and sexual norms in urban Senegal. She was one of only ten scholars in the United States to receive a fellowship through the African Regional Research Program.

Professor Foley is a medical anthropologist whose research explores the intersection of global health policies, national health priorities, and the household politics of managing ill health in marginalized communities. She has conducted extensive research in Senegal; her forthcoming book "Your Pocket is What Cures You: The Politics of Health in Senegal" (Rutgers University Press 2010) examines the gendered effects of neoliberal development policies and health sector reform. Foley has conducted research among African immigrants in Philadelphia and Worcester, analyzing health disparities and access to health resources, particularly access to HIV/AIDS prevention information, testing, and treatment.

With $49,500 in support from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Foley will be in Senegal from September 2009 through May 2010 to continue her research project titled "Sex in the City: Gender Relations amidst Social Crisis in Urban Senegal." The project addresses the social construction of gender and sexuality in the context of shifting marital patterns and transactional sex in Dakar. Her research will evaluate health and development efforts targeting registered and clandestine sex workers.

Foley has been a contributor to Clark's work with the aids2031 initiative, a worldwide consortium developing strategies in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Clark hosts the Project Management Unit overseeing nine working groups. Foley participates in the Social Drivers Group, which examines the underlying social, political, and cultural injustices that allow AIDS to thrive in certain areas of the world. She helped facilitate a series of community dialogues in Dakar, Senegal in 2008 aimed at soliciting the views of youth and sex workers on Senegal's HIV/AIDS policies and programs.

Foley received $61,924 from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, Inc., for a 2008 action research project called "Bridging Barriers: Meeting Youth Immigrant and Refugee Health Needs in Worcester, Ma." Clark research fellow Octavia Taylor was co-Principal Investigator of the project. Foley also received funding from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security on Action Research to Prevent and Reduce Youth and Gang Violence in Worcester, with Clark IDCE assistant professor Laurie Ross, as part of a cross disciplinary collaboration within the IDCE department.

Professor Foley, a resident of Worcester, has been at Clark since 2006. She taught previously in the anthropology department at Michigan State University and in the Health and Societies program at the University of Pennsylvania. She received a B.A. in anthropology at Kalamazoo College and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology at Michigan State University.