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About

I am a social anthropologist working at the intersections of health, environment and labour with an interest in political economy and a commitment to transdisciplinary working. My latest project (funded by the Wellcome Trust and Arts and Humanities Research Council/Global Challenges Research Fund) focuses on the entangled social-environmental conditions of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin in Mexico, with ethnographic focus on the Lake Chapala region, west-central Mexico. Prior to this research, I have worked on state-market-health relations in Mexico, documenting how those suffering from kidney failure without adequate social protections navigate entwined public/private regimes of care (see Kierans (2019) Chronic Failures: Kidneys, Regimes of Care and the State in Mexico, Rutgers University Press).

I work as Professor of Social Anthropology in Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems. I am currently Director of a cross-faculty, cross-disciplinary centre to promote humanities and social science thinking and practice at the intersections of medicine, science and health (Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences of Health, Medicine and Society). I have been working in Liverpool since 2002. Before that, I was Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Associate Lecturer and Researcher with the Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University, Ireland.

Research interests: science and technology studies; critical perspectives in medical anthropology; biosociality, environmental humanities; political and social theory; methodological innovation and the politics of description; Latin America (in particular, Mexico).

Prizes or Honours

  • Visiting Scholar (The National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2014)

Funded Fellowships

  • Research Fellowship Award (The Brocher Foundation, Switzerland, 2013)
  • Fulbright Fellow to Harvard University (The Fulbright Commission in Ireland, 2001)