Author: matthewbmartinelli

Interview With Gitte Vandborg Rasmussen

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

PhD, Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark

Gitte holds a PhD in medical anthropology and is a former psychiatric nurse. Her research concerns mental health and family life and explores connections between time and ADHD from an everyday family perspective. She draws on long-term fieldwork conducted in Danish families.

What is your article “”I Do not have ADHD When I Drive My Truck” Exploring the Temporal Dynamics of ADHD as a Lived Experience” about?

Co-written with Per Hove Thomsen, Sanne Lemcke, and Rikke Sand Andersen, this paper explores cases where interlocutors make use of space—such as a truck, a horse stable, or a space capsule/flat—as a strategy for balancing ADHD symptoms. Methodologically, the article draws on Stevenson´s concept “imagistic thinking” as a way to approach creative sides of managing ADHD. The main contribution of the paper is the concept of “own-time spaces”: personal spaces driven by dreams and desires and characterized by rhythm. In own-time spaces, ADHD symptoms fade into the background. The article adds to the existing understanding of shielding as a pedagogical strategy in coping with ADHD. Own-time spaces are more than concrete shields; they are personal, dynamic, and imagistic spaces that reflect a lifetime perspective, such as for example childhood dreams. Put simply, attending to own-time spaces is a strategy for regulating ADHD-experiences and thereby reduce ADHD symptoms

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

As both a medical anthropologist and psychiatric nurse, I seek to explore the entanglements between
biological and social experiences and explanations of living with ADHD. I approach this through the lens of time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and conceptualizing ADHD as a bio-chrono-social condition, my research unfolds the temporal entanglements of ADHD in bodies and families.

What drew you to this project?

A concrete empirical case kickstarted the idea of writing this article.
I have known Kenny for 15 years, first as my patient, and now as a research participant. Kenny is diagnosed with a severe degree of ADHD and has always been obsessed with trucks. Ever since he was a kid, he told me that his ADHD disappears when he is in a truck. Now, when an adult, the same counts; he still tells me that his ADHD disappears when he drives his truck. Kenny´s experiences of ADHD as a condition that fluctuates contrasted with my primary understanding of ADHD a highly biological condition. This contradiction has been my main motivation to write this article. I invited a team of cross-disciplinary co-authors from anthropology and psychiatry because I wanted the article to explore this mystery in the broadest possible sense

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

I defended my PhD dissertation three weeks ago, so right now I’m enjoying some downtime by watching a popular Netflix series called Sirenes.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

One key takeaway is that ADHD is a dynamic condition deeply entangled with time and space. People
actively engage in various forms of ‘time-work’ to manage their experiences and symptoms. Recognizing
these strategies can help us better understand ADHD beyond purely biomedical or social constructionist
frameworks.

Other places to connect:

Orchid

Linkedin

PURE

Interview With Ángela Cifuentes Astete

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Professor, Department of Humanistic Studies, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Santiago, Chile. Associate researcher, Transdisciplinary Laboratory on Social Practices and Subjectivity (LaPSoS), Faculty of Social Sciences, Universidad de Chile. External member, Medical Anthropology Research Center (MARC), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, España

Ángela Cifuentes is a transdisciplinary researcher, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, holding PhDs in Social Sciences and in Medical Anthropology and Global Health. In recent years, she has focused on exploring experiences of anxiety, forms of affectation, and mental health care practices in contemporary Chilean universities shaped by neoliberal logic.

What is your article “The University Lives Anxiety and De-pression”: Diagnostic Uses and Affective Negotiations in Mental Health Care Services for University Students in Chile” about?

In this article, I explore how mental health problems are experienced and named in Chilean universities, especially in contexts marked by competition, performance, and inequality. Based on interviews I conducted with students and mental health professionals across three types of institutions, I analyze the everyday uses of diagnoses like “anxiety” and “depression.” I show that, both for students and for professionals, these diagnoses do not necessarily reflect clinical illnesses but often serve as ways of naming forms of distress tied to the demands of academic life. In many cases, they allow students to access institutional support or justify difficult decisions, such as taking a break or changing degrees. I argue that these diagnostic uses are also affective negotiations in response to pressures of academic performance and social adjustment, and they open space for imagining alternatives in the face of failure. Mental health in the university thus emerges as a complex, contested, and constantly shifting field.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

My experience as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in various public and private mental health institutions has shaped a critical lens on experiences of suffering, affects, and the modes of management and care within institutions, leading me to focus on their political, cultural, and socio-historical dimensions. I am interested in generating knowledge that enables a deeper understanding of complex phenomena and contributes to social transformation. Currently, I am particularly interested in continuing research on university mental health, especially how global mental health discourses are locally reconfigured in Chilean universities in the post-pandemic context, exploring the affects, interdependencies, and technical mediations that shape students’ everyday care practices.

What drew you to this project?

The article is based on part of the findings from my doctoral research. Initially, the project aimed to study so-called ‘anxiety disorders’ in the context of public health in Chile. However, during the course of my doctoral studies, various expressions of distress erupted in Chilean universities: first, in May 2018, feminist protests against abuse and gender-based violence within universities; and then, in April 2019 (just a few months before the ‘chilean social uprising’), protests demanding greater access to mental health treatment services in universities. In those protests, student banners—echoed in the title of my article—declared that ‘at university we live anxiety and de-pression.’ This shifted my attention toward the use of mental health language in expressions of discontent, the institutional management of anxious affects, and its relationship to performance demands in universities.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)


This year, I’ve immersed myself in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin, fascinated by her ability to imagine alternative forms of life, relationships, and vital persistence. Her literature has become a source of inspiration for rethinking research as a political gesture. After reading several of her science fiction novels, I’ve now begun reading the fantasy saga “The Earthsea Cycle” with my daughter. Musically, I tend to move between very different registers — from dense, dark sounds to fusions that open up to something more hopeful. Lately, while working, I’ve been listening a lot to Tigran Hamasyan, an Armenian jazz pianist whose music helps me stay grounded and focused. On screen, I’m watching the final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

The main conclusion I aim to convey through my work is that mental health in university settings cannot be understood or addressed solely through reductionist and biomedical perspectives—nor can it be fully captured by interpretations that frame it exclusively as a form of inescapable social control. My research shows that while diagnoses and expressions of distress often involve individualized uses, they also function as affective languages and negotiation strategies in response to the demands of neoliberal academia. The key takeaway I propose is to rethink university mental health as a situated, collective, and political issue that reflects structural forms of exclusion, precarity, and inequality. It is urgent that public policies and institutional interventions acknowledge this pragmatic-political dimension of diagnoses, and move toward co-constructed strategies that do not reduce the complexity of student suffering to the private or clinical realm, but instead open up spaces for listening, recognition, and transformation of the structural conditions that produce it.

Other places to connect:

Website

Linkedin

Interview With Christopher Chapman

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University; Postdoctoral Affiliate, University
of Oxford

I am a medical anthropologist and sociologist. My work explores the intricacies of health and medicine in the Asia-Pacific, focusing on how people care for each other and how these practices intersect with medical and social service systems.

What is your article “Yuri’s Story: Memory, Relational Healing, and the Reflexive Logics of Art Therapy in Japanese Clinical Psychology” about?

Child protection systems around the world utilize mental health professionals to conduct assessments and provide children with therapeutic care. Japan is no exception. But thinking about child welfare and mental health cross-culturally helps us appreciate the
social side of practices that are commonly seen as (or hoped to be) objective, technical, and universal. My article details how clinical psychologist Yuri learned how to use art therapy to improve her professional work with abused or neglected children. Yuri’s story inadvertently dug up her own painful memories. Her return to childhood through art therapy unsettled her worldview: was her clinical work actually for the children, or was it just for herself? Yet, Yuri renewed her sense of clinical will. Cathartic resolutions of distress may help care practitioners develop empathy and become better carers. This is how Yuri thought art therapy was innovative for mental health care.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

While I am originally from a small, rural town in the Northwestern U.S., my research training has taken me across the world, from Hawai‘i and Japan to the U.K. and Thailand. My experiences in these places shape my interests in how people think about and enact care—and the lived realities of how caregiving plays out.

What drew you to this project?

I always find myself drawn to the ‘in-between’ things, especially in medicine and culture. Child protection does not immediately bring things like clinics and hospitals to mind, but it is a critically important arena where decisions and actions have dire consequences for one’s health and well-being. Japan’s child protection system has been undergoing significant reform throughout the past decade, providing an even more complicated space to think about care and culture.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

While I am reading (and re-reading) chapters from my in-progress book, I also recently started re-reading the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. It is a fun hobby, but for my work, it is also helpful in seeing how writers in other genres craft an argument, describe social life, and present information to the reader.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I cannot stress enough the value of strong and long-term relationships in ethnographic work. Yuri’s story was not a single moment, but conversations at the office, meetings in the therapy room, and chats in coffee shops over a year. I learned some of the most moving parts of her life quite late into my fieldwork. It can take time to appreciate another person’s life, but taking small steps toward making a person feel wanted can go a long way in building a rewarding connection (like inviting someone to a cup of
coffee/tea).

Interview With Henry J. Whittle

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Doctoral researcher, Department of Anthropology and Sociology & Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA), SOAS University of London

Dr Henry Whittle is a psychiatrist and anthropologist in training. He began his research career using mixed methods to study food insecurity, before pivoting towards mental health rehabilitation after specialising in psychiatry. Following further training in medical anthropology, he is currently working towards a PhD at SOAS University of London.

What is your article “Ronaldo on the Clapham Omnibus: Complex Recoveries in Complex Psychosis“ about?

In the article, I think about what we mean by recovery in psychosis. I ask how it complicates our current understanding of recovery if we consider the experiences of people with the most complex forms of psychosis. These people are inadvertently excluded from much debate on this topic. Ethnography is one of the few ways that their experiences can be incorporated meaningfully. Drawing on six months of ethnography on an inpatient psychiatric rehabilitation unit, the article centres around a man I call Shepherd, whose journey to becoming a more confident, calmer, happier person looked very different to most portraits of recovery in the existing literature. This is important because our understanding of recovery shapes mental health policy in material ways. If we oversimplify recovery by missing people like Shepherd, we risk structurally undermining the interventions—including inpatient rehabilitation—that may be most effective in supporting them to live well.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

I am a psychiatrist and anthropologist, still working through my training in both disciplines. I currently work in an Early Intervention in Psychosis service in London and I will be part of the new Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA) at SOAS University of London. My research interests broadly relate to the social, cultural, and structural influences on mental health care and recovery, particularly for people living with more severe and enduring mental illnesses. Above all, I am an advocate for using applied social science as a basis for dialogue with service users, clinicians, practitioners, relatives, carers, and everyone else invested in improving mental health services.

What drew you to this project?

I have been intrigued by inpatient units ever since I first started working in psychiatry. Even though things are a little different now from how they were in Goffman’s time, the ‘total institution’ was still the main conceptual apparatus I received from my professional training to think through these places. Contributing towards addressing that gap, even slightly, was part of my motivation for taking on this project. The other part was that I have always been drawn to working with people with complex psychosis. I have learned so much from them, mainly about the limits of my own frameworks and my own imagination, but also about the complex, conflicting, and sometimes unexpected roles that institutions play in their lives. This is poorly captured in a clinical evidence base that, on the whole, tends to privilege streamlined understandings and analytic closure. I thought that ethnography could be particularly useful here—to help us hold onto that complexity as we make pragmatic decisions about care.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

Music and sport are big parts of my life. Both were important for this study. I bonded with Shepherd over a shared love of sport, and when I think of Apollo Ward I mainly think of playing pool and taking requests to play music on my phone—Orbital, Ed Sheeran, the Darkness, and the Rolling Stones were the soundtrack to this study. So now I’m watching my beloved Liverpool play football again after celebrating England Lionesses win the European Championship, and I’m listening to a lot of exciting British and Irish post-punk bands—Big Special, Wet Leg, and Sprints at the moment. I also recently started reading The Brown Sahib Revisited by Tarzie Vittachi, a searing takedown of the legacies of British colonialism in South Asia that was a wonderful gift given to me by my mentor and friend Sushrut Jadhav.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

That we need to take people’s ambivalent feelings and contradictory dispositions towards mental health services seriously in imperfect systems, even if it makes us uncomfortable. These contradictions may be our only glimpses of the life-sustaining roles that some institutions play in people’s lives. That is not to say that we should avoid radical critique, just that we need to proceed with caution. It is easy to miss complexity in this field, and missing complexity has material consequences that tend to impact the most marginalised people disproportionately.

Interview With Tawni L. Tidwell

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Research Assistant Professor, Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tawni Tidwell is a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medical doctor. She has served as Project Lead for the Tukdam Study since 2020. Her research explores cultural practices for differential wellbeing and resilience, especially those cultivated over the life course from Tibetan medical and Buddhist approaches. She maintains a private clinic.

What is your article “Life in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for the Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State” about?

This article presents two cases from the Tukdam Study, an international collaboration with Tibetan monastic populations in India on the post-death meditative state called tukdam. Entered by advanced Tibetan Buddhist practitioners through a variety of different practices, this state provides an ontological frame that is investigated by two distinct intellectual traditions—the Tibetan Buddhist and medical tradition on one hand and the Euroamerican biomedical and scientific tradition on the other— using their respective means of inquiry. This article explores how the two traditions enact distinct views of the body at the time of death alongside their respective conceptualizations of what constitutes life itself. It examines when the two investigative paradigms might converge, under what contexts, and through which correlating means of evidence to understand the varied physiological changes exhibited in the context of dying and their implications for conceptualizing different states of being.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

Tidwell’s interest in becoming an aerospace medical doctor and studying the body in extreme conditions took an unconventional path to eventually lead her to pursue Tibetan medical education in India and Tibet concurrent with doctoral training in anthropological inquiry as to how culture gets under the skin. Her current research facilitates bridges across the Euroamerican scientific tradition and the Tibetan medical tradition for illness contexts such as cancer, infectious disease and chronic inflammatory disorders along with the attendant epistemologies and ontologies related to embodiment, ecological approaches to health, body-substance dynamics in Tibetan pharmacology, and diagnostic/treatment paradigms. She investigates cultural practices over lifetime trajectories that affect mind-body outcomes derived from Buddhist contemplative and Tibetan medical approaches.

What drew you to this project?

This project is a deeply collaborative project with the Tibetan community in which we are co-developing research aims, constructs, and measures to mutually inform each intellectual tradition. With some of the most accomplished practitioners of the Tibetan Buddhist world, we have the opportunity to understand not only the life stories of these remarkable individuals but how they have used their lives to engage practices that transform their minds, bodies and experiences. We are fortunate to work with such a dedicated field team who are deeply devoted to the XIV Dalai Lama’s engagement with science and facilitating understandings of wellbeing with colleagues from the Russian Academy of Sciences and India-based National Institute for Mental Health and Neurosciences.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

Gül Dölen’s work on consciousness among octopus species, social cognition and critical periods. E.g., here is her interview with Being Patient, which focuses on innovative work on brain health, cognitive science, and neurodegenerative diseases.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

How we die speaks volumes about how we live. In this short life we share on this planet, our collective capacity to transform ourselves, our communities and our global condition is emphasized through the extraordinary exemplars and intrepid cultural practices of many from whom we still have opportunities to learn.

Other places to connect:

Twitter: @Tawni Tidwell

Instagram: tawnitidwell

LinkedIn

Interview With Talia S. Katz, PhD

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Assistant Professor of Israel Studies, State University
of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton

Talia Katz is a cultural anthropologist whose research
intersects the medical humanities, childhood studies, and gender studies. Her first book project, A Healing Stage: Violence, Self-Knowledge, and Therapeutic Theater in Israel, is a historical and ethnographic study of psychodrama in Israel, focusing on the mixed Jewish-Palestinian city of Lod.

What is your article “A Ring Transforms: Children Learning Life and Death in Lod” about?

My article develops an ethnographic method of attending to children’s voices, showing how what I call the ‘fragmented’ texture of children’s knowledge yields new insights about Israeli society and its conflicts. The article is based on sixteen months of participant observation at a community theater center in Lod, Israel. Taking elementary school children as ethnographers, I show how their play reveals that they learn political violence not as a specific event but rather as part of the conceptual structure of their world. This finding is particularly important for debates on trauma in the social sciences, illustrating how the biomedical focus on the etiological event can eclipse foundational ways in which violence shapes one’s self and world.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University, I use
ethnographic methods to ask questions about health, illness, trauma, and subjectivity. At its core, my research seeks to understand how both psychological experts and everyday people respond to the marks of violence on their milieu. I am interested in what repair looks like from the perspective of the everyday and how the frameworks I encounter in my fieldwork differ from dominant legal and biomedical model.

What drew you to this project?

Having grown up in a household shaped by chronic illness and migration, I have always been passionate about how children put together that which adults, for one reason or another, may not share directly. When I began exploratory research for my dissertation, I learned that the Lod Theater held a weekly
children’s theater group. It seemed like a natural fit for the dissertation research – a chance to empirically study questions towards which I already had an affinity.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

A colleague introduced me to the powerful and beautifully written book Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza. I appreciated the astute rendering of how grief reverberates through kinship relations and reflections on subjectivity.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

Often adults – whether clinicians, educators, or care-givers – will ponder how best to explain X event or X challenge to a child. My research points to the ways in which children are already putting such knowledge together, whether adults have the courage to recognize this or not. Shifting the questions we ask about children’s knowledge can meaningfully reshape our understanding of what constitutes an adequate response.

Other places to connect:

Twitter: @TaliaSKatz

Linkedin

Website

Interview with Simon van der Weele

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Assistant professor, University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands

Simon van der Weele is a moral philosopher and ethnographer. He tries to make sense of ethical life by combining philosophical and social-scientific methods and frameworks. His research engages with care and caring, particularly for people with intellectual disabilities.

What is your article “‘Why Bother?’ Skeptical Doubt and Moral Imagination in Care for People with Profound Intellectual Disabilities” about?

People with profound intellectual disabilities are completely dependent on care from others to survive and thrive. But since they are non-verbal, interpreting their needs and preferences is difficult. As a result, caregivers experience constant uncertainty about whether or not their care is good and appropriate. In this article I try to understand how care professionals maintain faith in the meaning of their care, despite this uncertainty.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

I am fascinated by care and how we care for each other. I am trained as a philosopher, and I enjoy thinking philosophically about care. But I’ve come to believe that such philosophical thinking requires ethnographic texture for it to have bearing on our experiences. That’s why I try to bring ethnography to philosophy, and vice-versa.

What drew you to this project?

I’ve been entranced with the care for people with profound intellectual disabilities ever since I first set foot in a group home where a few of such people lived. Make no mistake, there’s nothing romantic about this care: it’s hard physical labour, day after day, often under precarious conditions. But I was deeply moved by the patience, intelligence and creativity I witnessed in the interactions between people with profound intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. I just had to move closer to this.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

Lately, I keep reaching for more stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. I just finished reading her collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. The titular story’s emotional impact hinges on ‘sedoretu’, a complicated polyamorous marriage system conjured up by Le Guin. There’s a strikingly ethnographic quality to her science fiction – it often reads like a kind of speculative anthropology, clothed in deeply human storytelling.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I want to show my readers that imagination and creativity are at the heart of care. We often think of care as monotonous, even tedious work. The creative energy caregivers put into their work is seldom noticed. I hope my work provides some concepts to recognize and bolster this creativity.

Other places to connect:

Linkedin

Website

Interview With Jennifer Karlin

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Associate Professor, University of California-San
Francisco

Dr. Jennifer Karlin is an Associate Professor at UCSF. With fellowship
training in family planning and clinical medical ethics and a PhD in anthropology and history of medicine, Dr. Karlin is a researcher and full-scope family physician whose work aims to find ways to empower people through their healthcare experiences.

What is your article “Intimacy, Anonymity, and “Care with Nothing in the Way” on an Abortion Hotline” about?

The article explores the operations and emotional dynamics of a reproductive health hotline. It examines how the hotline offers intimate, yet anonymous support to individuals seeking information about miscarriages and abortion. This support system is characterized by a non-judgmental and compassionate approach, providing “care with nothing in the way.” The hotline serves as a crucial lifeline, offering both emotional support and vital information during a potentially distressing time for callers. Despite the anonymity, the interactions create a safe and supportive environment where callers can freely express their concerns and receive guidance without the fear of stigma or judgment. Volunteers on the hotline often find the experience more rewarding and impactful compared to in-clinic care, as they can connect deeply with callers in a unique and supportive manner without having the regulatory climate that often can cause additional trauma to people seeking in-person care through more formal networks.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

As a board-certified family physician and fellowship-trained family-planning specialist, my research bridges clinical practice with anthropological inquiry to enhance person-centered care for historically underserved populations. My background in anthropology and history of medicine informs my understanding of how social, political, and institutional structures shape health care experiences. I investigate a range of topics, including rheumatoid arthritis, grief, end-stage renal disease, reproductive and sexual health, and community engagement in medical research. My work emphasizes ethically informed care, empowering individuals through biopsychosocial analysis, patient-care team dynamics, and structural aspects of health systems. In reproductive health, I focus on de-medicalizing contraceptive methods and abortion care to reduce stigma. Additionally, I examine access to care for vulnerable populations and the incorporation of DEI initiatives in medical education. Through interdisciplinary research, I aim to improve complex disease management and promote equitable health care by challenging and reimagining traditional norms and structures.

What drew you to this project?

I was inspired by this project because of my long-standing interest in understanding and improving person-centered care for historically underserved populations. This was a natural field site to explore my commitment to de-medicalized and de-stigmatized care. This hotline offered an invaluable opportunity to examine how intimate, anonymous support can profoundly impact individuals seeking abortions, providing insights into creating more compassionate and accessible reproductive health services in all settings. Additionally, my interest in how social, political, and institutional structures affect health care experiences motivated me to think about how hotlines can serve as crucial resources within these contexts.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

I just started reading ‘High Magick’ by Damien Echols, which explores the spiritual practices Echols
developed while wrongfully imprisoned for murder. A marathon swim group recommended it to me for
its mental training techniques, as I am currently preparing for a 21-mile open water swim.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

A main action takeaway from the paper “Intimacy, Anonymity, and ‘Care with Nothing in the Way’ On an
Abortion Hotline” is the recommendation to support and expand support for informal structures of care.
The hotline provides a crucial space for individuals to receive compassionate, non-judgmental support
and guidance in a stigmatized and often challenging context. The anonymity and intimacy offered by
these services can significantly improve the quality of care and emotional support for those pregnant
people, emphasizing the importance of such resources in reproductive health care systems.

Other places to connect:

Website

Linkedin

Interview With Tenzin Namdul

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Assistant Professor, Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, University of Minnesota

Dr. Tenzin Namdul is a medical anthropologist and Tibetan Medicine doctor. Tenzin is an assistant professor and the director of Tibetan Healing Initiative at the University of Minnesota’s Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. His research focuses on cognitive resilience, aging, death and dying, end-of-life care, and integrative medicine. 

What is your article Death and Happiness: Exploring the Temporalities of the Meditated Death and Everyday Life in Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Tukdam about?

This article illustrates how death and stages of dying are employed by Tibetan Buddhist practitioners as avenues to reframe individual’s relationship to oneself and others, and to engage in advanced meditation called, tukdam, that transcends clinical (biological) death. Although tukdam—a meditative state entered through various practices resting in extremely subtle consciousness while dying—is seen to only be achieved by adept practitioners, the philosophy and psychology that underpin tukdam inform Tibetan communities beyond just accomplished adepts and frame the very way death and dying is conceived. Furthermore, the article proposes that Tibetan Buddhist practices that culminate in tukdam symbolize the way death and dying is assumed to be approached more broadly beyond advanced practitioners, and thereby, provides a cultural model for an “ideal” death that guides approaches to dying for oneself and others. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

As a Tibetan medicine doctor and medical anthropologist, I incorporate my diverse training to examine how the intersection of bio-sociocultural factors and the intimate relationship between mind and body shape the ways individuals flourish, age, and die, as well as care for the dying. My current research is an interdisciplinary study of healthy aging among Tibetan Buddhist monks in India.

What drew you to this project?

My initial encounter with a Tibetan monk in the state of tukdam meditation where the practitioner kept his “dead body” intact for weeks in hot and humid weather not only blew my mind, but also compelled me to ask a series of questions that led to my ongoing work. Particularly, I wondered how such specific cultural practices intertwined with death and stages of dying impact the way community members perceive death, die, and care for dying people. 

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now? (Doesn’t have to be anthropological!)

I am currently reading two books in tandem: “The End of Trauma…” by Michael Bonanno and “A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth. Both of these books explore human relationships. social changes, and resiliency in the face of adversities.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I would emphasize the importance and need of finding confidence and joy rooted in loving kindness

Other places to connect:

Linkedin