School of Social and Political Science

Background

Laurie Denyer Willis is a medical anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, using sensory ethnographic methods to understand religious experience, right-wing populism, religious feminisms, and the politics of global health. 

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Her first book, Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil (University of California Press, 2023), grapples with the turn to Evangelicalism in Rio, and the kinds of conflicting promises, desires, deceptions and manipulations that go along with Evangelical faith and right-wing populist expansion in the city. 

For the past few years, Laurie has been working on a collaborative project with anthropologists in Kampala, Uganda and Bangkok, Thailand, through the project Antimicrobials In Society (AMIS) at LSHTM. For Laurie, this work has entailed a deepening understanding of the politics of irrationality that governs approaches to antibiotic access and use amidst broader global health concerns with antibiotic resistance (AMR). 

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Laurie currently co-directs the Feminist Cities CoLab, funded by the British Academy, with a focus on contemporary feminist activism and urban violence in Latin America. 

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You can get in touch at Laurie.denyerwillis@ed.ac.uk

Laurie competed her PhD in Medical Anthropology at McGill, and her MSc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Urban Studies and Planning.

I am accepting PhD students. Please email me to discuss your research proposal.