Ellen Foley is a medical anthropologist whose research addresses the social production of disease with a focus on how intertwined global, national, and local social forces shape vulnerability to disease, health status, and access to medical care, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Her scholarship examines the processes by which social and economic changes articulate with existing hierarchies of gender, class, and generation to produce conflicts that are largely unseen and misunderstood by dominant development and health discourses. She focuses on the lived experience of illness and suffering as well as the intimate household politics of gender inequality and managing health and sickness in resource-constrained environments.
Ellen Foley
Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice
- About
- Scholarly and creative works
Degrees
- Ph.D. in Anthropology, Michigan State University, 2002
- M.A. in Anthropology, Michigan State University, 1998
- B.A. in Anthropology, Kalamazoo College, 1994
Affiliated Departments
Sustainability and Social Justice, Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies (CGRAS)
Scholarly and creative works
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Commentary on Over-Looked Spaces: Theorizing Surveillance-Care in Reproductive Health
Published in Medical Anthropology2025Vol. 44Issue #3 -
Chapter: Beyond Content: Radical Belonging and Learning as a Community in a feminist development studies course on population and the environment2025 -
Sex, Love, and Study Abroad: The Impact of Intimate Relationships in Study Abroad Outcomes
Published in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad2024 -
Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health
2024ISBN #ISBN 9781032256375 -
In Pursuit of the Demographic Dividend: The Return of Economic Justifications for Family Planning in Africa
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters2022 -
The innovation imperative in global health: gendered futurity in the Sayana® Press.
Published in Medicine Anthropology Theory2022Vol. 92Issue #2 -
The Innovation Imperative in Global Health: Gendered Futurity in the Sayana® Press
Published in Medicine Anthropology Theory2022Vol. 9Issue #2 -
Advisor-Advisee Feminist Relational Mentoring
Published in Feminist Anthropology2020 -
Legislating Sexuality in Africa: Human Rights, Society, and the State
Chapter: Colonial Legacies, Electoral Politics, and the Production of (Anti) Homosexuality in SenegalPublished by University of Wisconsin Press2020 -
Gender and Sexuality in Senegalese Societies: Critical Perspectives and Methods
Chapter: Radical Inclusion and the Life of a Public Intellectual: A Conversation with Cheikh Ibrahima NiangPublished by Lexington Books2019