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Visiting Faculty & Affiliates

  • Ietza Bojorquez

    Ietza Bojorquez

    ietzabch@colef.mx

    Dr. Ietza Bojorquez, MD, MPH, PhD is an epidemiologist whose work focuses on the social determinants of health. She has conducted research on migration and health (migrant’s mental health, changes in health-related practices after migration, and migrant’s access to healthcare services), and health-related practices (dietary and physical activity practices). 

    Among her more recent projects are “Evaluating health system responsiveness and inclusion of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in health and public health policies in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic”, ““Mobile Populations and Covid-19 in Mexico: Health Risks and Access to Services” and “Implementation and evaluation of a community-based model to improve access to mental health and psychosocial care among migrants”.

    Recent publications include:

    1. Infante, César, Vieitez-Martinez Isabel, Rodriguez-Chavez César, Nápoles, Gustavo, Larrea-Schiavon Silvana, Bojorquez, Ietza (2022). Access to health care for migrants along the Mexico-United States border: Applying a framework to access barriers to care in Mexico. Frontiers in Public Health, 10:921417. DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.921417
    2. Bojorquez Ietza, Sepúlveda Jaime, Lee Deandra, Strathdee Steffanie (2022). Interrupted transit and common mental disorders among migrants in Tijuana, Mexico. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. Publicado en línea 2 de junio 2022. doi:10.1177/00207640221099419.
    3. Bojorquez-Chapela Ietza, Strathdee Steffanie A, Garfein Richard S, Benson, Constance A, Chaillon, Antoine, Ignacio, Caroline, Sepulveda, Jaime (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among migrants in shelters in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. BMJ Global Healthi, 7:e007202. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007202.
    4. Bojorquez-Chapela, Ietza, Infante, César, Larrea-Schiavon, Silvana, Vieitez-Martinez, Isabel (2021).  In-Transit Migrants and Asylum Seekers: Inclusion Gaps In Mexico’s COVID-19 Health Policy Response. Health Affairs, 40(7):1154-1161. DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00085. ISSN electrónico: 1544-5208.
    5. Bojorquez, Ietza, Cabieses, Báltica, Arósquipa, Carlos, Arroyo, Juan, Cubillos Novella, Andrés, Knipper, Michael, Orcutt, Miriam, Sedas, Ana Cristina, Rojas, Karol (2021). Migration and health in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Lancet, 397:1243-1245. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00629-2.
  • Julia Brown

    Julia Brown

    Julia.Brown@ucsf.edu

    Julia Brown, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSF, is an anthropologist and bioethics scholar from Australia. Her book, The Clozapine Clinic: Health Agency in High-Risk Conditions (Routledge, 2022), is an ethnography about experiences of health and social empowerment in the context of psychosis, antipsychotic medication and side-effect monitoring, and multi-morbidity in the United Kingdom and Australia. Dr. Brown is the Associate Editor of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Currently working on the ethics of novel biotechnologies, her main interests are health equity, social and biological interactions, especially regarding genomic knoweldge and experimental interventions. Brown recently received an NIH K99/R00 Award from the National Human Genome Research Institute to conduct an “embedded ethics” ethnography on the emergence of prenatal gene therapies and the tensions around social inclusion for underrepresented communities. You can find her academic publications here. 
  • Elizabeth Carpenter-Song

    Elizabeth Carpenter-Song

    Elizabeth.A.Carpenter-Song@Dartmouth.edu

    Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor at Dartmouth University, is a medical and psychological anthropologist whose work explores the lived experiences of mental illness and the contemporary context of U.S. mental health services. Much of her work involves engaging with marginalized communities in the U.S. using ethnographic methods to identify and design promising strategies for improving services, reducing disparities, and enhancing wellbeing. 

    https://anthropology.dartmouth.edu/people/elizabeth-carpenter-song-0
  • Fernando José Ciello

    Fernando José Ciello

    fernando.ciello@gmail.com

    Dr. Fernando Ciello is currently an Associate Professor at Federal University of Roraima, Brazil. His activities are developed at the Insikiran Institute for Indigenous Higher Education as well as the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology in the referred university. He completed the write-up of his doctoral dissertation as an awardee of the Fulbright Program while in residence at UC San Diego as a Visiting Scholar within the Department of Anthropology and in residence at the Center for Global Mental Health (Co-Sponsored by UCSD Professors Csordas and Jenkins). His doctorate was conferred (April, 2019) by the Department of Anthropology of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC, Brazil) under the supervision of Professor Esther Jean Langdon.

    Dr. Ciello’s research interests are broadly connected to the area of anthropology of health and includes the ethnographic study of mental health, alternative therapies, spirituality, narrative, diagnostics and therapeutic process. Professor Ciello’s doctoral research explored the relations between psychotherapeutic and spiritual practices in a psychiatric outpatient clinic in Southern Brazil. His current project, “Healing Arts in Northern Brazil: health and agency in ethnographic perspectives”, focuses on healers and their practices, as well as mapping the ways traditional knowledges are enacted to produce healing and resolution for different ailments and conditions. Healers of the region come from different backgrounds, with a strong presence of pajés, xamãs and curadores, and their practices encompass different interfaces between indigenous and official/medical orientations. Given its broad nature, the project also envolves an approach to indigenous health and indigenous mental health problems, given the high rates of suicide among native groups in the area.

    PUBLICATIONS:
    Ciello, Fernando J.
    2016. Feminist killjoys e reflexões (in)felizes sobre obstinação e felicidade. Revista de Estudos Feministas. vol.24 no.3. Florianópolis. DOI: 10.1590/1806-9584-2016v24n3p1019.
    Arboleya, Arilda; Ciello, Fernando J; Meucci, Simone.
    2015.“Educação para uma vida melhor”: trajetórias sociais de docentes negros. Cadernos de Pesquisa. Vol.45, n.158. São Paulo, SP. DOI: 10.1590/198053143248 .
    Ciello, Fernando J.
    2015. Sobre a loucura e sobre o social: práticas psiquiátricas contemporâneas e suas (re)configurações. V Reunião Equatorial de Antropologia/ XIV Reunião de Antropólogos do Norte e Nordeste. Maceió, AL.
    Ciello, Fernando J.
    2013. Saúde mental, loucura e saberes: reforma psiquiátrica, interações e identidades em uma clínica-dia. Dissertação (Mestrado em Antropologia Social) – Departamento de Antropologia da Universidade Federal do Paraná.
  • Javier Escobar

    Javier Escobar

    escobaja@rwjms.rutgers.edu

    Dr. Escobar, M.D., M.Sc. is Emeritus Professor at Rutgers University and Professor of Psychiatry at Florida International University. Formerly, he was dean for global health at Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, also at Rutgers-RWJMS. 

    Professor Escobar’s primary research base is Colombia, South America. He was Principal Investigator at Rutgers for the NIMH-funded grant “Genetics of Severe Mental Illness” a cross-national research project in Colombia, South America. He is currently consultant and advisor for a large biobank project on the genetics of severe mental disorders also in Colombia. He is a member of the advisory committee and co-investigator of the NIH Fogarty grant, “Multidisciplinary Training Program on Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Disorders” a grant training Latin American Researchers from Argentina, Peru and Bolivia. He has been a member of several national groups including: The DSM-5 Task Force that produced the latest diagnostic criteria for mental disorders in North America, The National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Physicians Scholars Program, and The Committee on Gulf War and Health, Institute of Medicine, Washington, DC Associate Editor, American Journal of Psychiatry. He is currently Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry. He was also Associate Editor, for Psychiatric Services. Throughout his career, Dr. Escobar has had many national and international assignments and has received many honors. He has published over 300 scientific articles in national and international books and journals. His recent book highlights global mental health issues and strategies including cultural research, innovative research in Latin America and abuse of psychiatry in Spain early in the 20th century: Global Mental Health: Latin American and Spanish-Speaking Populations, Rutgers University Press, 2020. 
  • Nofit Itzhak

    Nofit Itzhak
  • Ellen Kozelka

    Ellen Kozelka

    Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, University of Vermont

    As an Anthropologist and Global Mental Health (GMH) scholar, Ellen examines how structures of inequity such as coloniality, gender, poverty, and/or ethnicity shape the formation of, access to, and experience in mental health care systems for marginalized populations in the US and Mexico. She specifically focuses attention on experience within novel or "non-traditional" forms of care, whether that be community based, religious substance use treatment for ethnically Mexican women or emergent digital mental health tools for persons with serious and persistent mental illness. 

    She designs independent projects as well as collaborates on team-based interdisciplinary and comparative research to investigate the inequities build into social structures and what they tell us about the dynamic cultural conceptions of mental illness treatment and its experience. In doing so, Ellen explores the impossibility of mental health treatment for individuals (in any form ) to fully address the structural and cultural factors like immigration systems, colonialism in medicine, racism, gender-based violence, and socioeconomic insecurity that create distress in people's lives as a call to action for anthropologists and medical practicioners alike to reshape mental healthcare research and practice to counteract those structures. 

     

    Selected Publications

    1) Kozelka, Ellen E. S. C. Acquilano, M. Al-Abdulmunem, S. Guarino, G. Elwyn, R. E.
    Drake and E. Carpenter-Song
    2023 “Digital Mental Health and its Discontents: How Assumptions about Technology
    Create Barriers for Equitable Access.” Psychiatric Services. doi:
    10.1176/appi.ps.20230238

    2) Kozelka, Ellen E. S. C. Acquilano, M. Al-Abdulmunem, S. Guarino, G. Elwyn, R. E.
    Drake and E. Carpenter-Song
    2023 “Documenting the Digital Divide: Identifying Barriers to Digital Mental Health
    Access among People with Serious Mental Illness in Community Settings.” SSM –
    Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2023.100241

    3) Kozelka, Ellen E.
    2023. “Living the Process: Examining the Continuum of Coercion and Care in Tijuana's
    Community-Based Rehabilitation Centers. Cult Med Psychiatry.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09822-8.

    4) Kozelka, Ellen E.
    2022. “The Guard’s Dilemma: Social Roles and Therapeutic Experience for Inpatient-
    Guards in Tijuana’s Community-Based Addiction
    Treatment.” Ethos.  https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12326

    5) Kozelka, Ellen E., Janis H. Jenkins, and Elizabeth Carpenter-Song
    2021. “Advancing Health Equity in Digital Mental Health: Lessons from Medical
    Anthropology through COVID-19 and Beyond.” JMIR Ment Health 8 (8):e28555. doi:
    10.2196/28555.

    6) Kozelka, Ellen E.
    2018    “Concepciones culturales del ‘drogadicto’ en la frontera de México-Estados
    Unidos y la formación del clima de tratamiento en dos centros de rehabilitación
    Tijuanenses.” In ¿Dejar las drogas con ayuda de Dios?: Experiencias de internamiento
    en centros de rehabilitación religiosos y espirituales en la región fronteriza de Baja
    California, edited by Olga Odgers Ortiz and Olga Lidia Olivas Hernández, Pp. 31-54.
    Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

    7) Kozelka, Ellen E. and Janis H. Jenkins
    2017   “Renaming non-communicable diseases.” The Lancet Global Health 5(7):e655.
    DOI: 10.1016/s2214-109x(17)30211-5.

    8) Jenkins, Janis H. and Ellen E. Kozelka
    2017   "Global Mental Health and Psychopharmacology in Precarious Ecologies:
    Anthropological Considerations for Engagement and Efficacy." In The Palgrave
    Handbook of Sociocultural Perspectives on Global Mental Health, edited by R White, S Jain, DMR Orr, and U Read. Pp. 151-168. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
  • Angel Martínez-Hernáez

    Angel Martínez-Hernáez

    He is a Distinguished and ICREA-Academia Professor of Medical Anthropology and head of the Medical Anthropology Research Center (MARC) at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He received his PhD from the Universitat de Barcelona with a thesis that was later published (2000) by Routledge with a foreword by Arthur Kleinman (Harvard University): What’s Behind the Symptom? On Psychiatric Observation and Anthropological Understanding. He has been visiting scholar or professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the Universitá degli Studi di Perugia, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil), the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and the University of California San Diego (Fulbright), among others. He is the author or co-author of more than 30 books and reports and 120 book chapters and articles in main journals such as American Anthropologist, Social Science & Medicine, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, BMJ Global Health, Socio-Anthropologie, AM Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Medica, the European Journal of Public Health, BMC Psychiatry, and Medical Anthropology, among others. He has served as an expert for the World Health Organization- Regional Office for Europe, and evaluator for a variety of academic and non-academic programs, such as the “European Commission's Framework Programmes” and the “AlBan EuropeAid Programme.” Currently, his research focuses on structural competency in global mental health initiatives and on “healthcare cultures”; the latter being understood as the intangible aspects manifested in patterns of care, such as values and representations. His edited book with Stella Evangelidou : RESET: Reflexiones antropológicas sobre la pandemia de Covid-19 (2020) was recipient of the XXIV Premio Nacional de Edición Universitaria (best health sciences monograph). His recent article, "The echo of the world: The castaway, the Garabandal apparitions, and the crisis of presence" can be found on American Anthropologist. 

    PUBLICATIONS
  • Olga Odgers Ortiz

    Olga Odgers Ortiz

    odgers@colef.mx

    PhD, Professor of Sociology, Social Studies Department, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico. She is a sociologist whose principal research interests are in the crossroads of migration, religion, and health, focusing on the experience of migrants trapped in mobility in the US-MX border. 

    She has been Principal Investigator for the project Range of Therapies provided by Evangelical Rehabilitation Centers for Drug Addicts in Baja California Border Region (Conacyt) and Co-PI (with Professor T. Csordas) for Tracing Mobility and CAre Trajectories: Migrants and Asylum Seekers' Experiences in the US-Mx Border (PIMSA). Currently, Professor Odgers is Co-PI (with C. Smith) of the projects Regimes of Closure and Mobility Aspirations: Investigating the Effect of the Global North Visa, Asylum, and Resettlement Policies on Intercontinental Mixed Migration to Latin America (SSHRC-Canada). 

    She is Director of the journal Migraciones Internacionales. 

    Her recent publications include: 

    1. Odgers, O., Olivas-Hernández, O.L.,&Bojorquez-Chapela, I. (2023) Waiting in Motion.
      Migrants’ Involvement in Civil Society Organizations While Pursuing a Migration
      Project, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 21:4, 624-
      636, DOI: 10.1080/15562948.2022.2155335
    2. Llanes, N., Bojorquez, I., & Odgers, O. (2023). Oferta de servicios de salud sexual y
      reproductiva a personas migrantes centroamericanas en Tijuana. Revista
      panamericana de salud pública, 47. https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2023.56
    3. Llanes, N., Odgers, O., Bojorquez, I., & Valenzuela, J. (2023). Narrative strategies to re-
      signify sexual violence among gender and sexuality diverse Central American migrants
      in Tijuana. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 25(8), 1-14 DOI:
      10.1080/13691058.2023.2233579
    4. Faret, L., Odgers, O., Rodríguez, M. y Caballeros, Á. (2022). Who to trust? International
      risks and responses to the Covid-19 crisis in Mexico and Central America. In COVID-19
      Responses of Local Communities around the World. Exploring Trust in the Context of
      Risk and Fear, Routledge. ISBN 9781032270760
    5. Bojorquez, I., Odgers, O., & Olivas, O. (2021). Psychosocial and Mental health during
      the COVID-19 lockdown: A rapid qualitative study in migrant shelters at the Mexico-
      United States border. Salud Mental, 44(4).
      http://revistasaludmental.mx/index.php/salud_mental/article/view/SM.0185-
      3325.2021.022
    6. Odgers, O. (2020). The perception of violence in narratives of Central American
      migrants at the border between Mexico and the United States. Revue européenne des
      migrations internationales, 36(1), 53-73. https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.14452
    7. Odgers, O., Csordas, T., Bojorquez, I., & Olivas, O. (2020). Embodiment and somatic
      modes of attention in the Evangelical care model in drug rehabilitation centers
      (Tijuana, Mexico). Social Compass, 68(3), 430-446
      https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0037768620974272
  • Nadia Santillanes

    Nadia Santillanes

    nadiasantillanes@gmail.com 

    PhD, Professor of Anthropology, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Noreste, México.

    Dr. Santillanes participated in 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Global Mental Health and the Global Health Program at the University of California, San Diego. Her research area is medical anthropology, with a focus on understanding the link between mental health and migration, particularly the various forms of violence and living conditions of female migrants. She recently took part in the design, pilot, and implementation of a mental health care model that provides support and therapeutic listening for female migrants, aiming to establish minimum criteria for frontline institutions to offer adequate care (INMUJERES, 2022).

    Her recent publications include: 

    1. Santillanes Allande, N.I. (2023). La trayectoria social como instrumento para el estudio de la salud mental de grupos sociales con experiencia migratoria. Migración, trabajo y salud. Reflexiones en torno a temas persistentes y emergentes. Coordinado por Maritza Caicedo Riascos. Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM.
    2. Santillanes Allande, N. I., & Sánchez López, G. (2023). Prácticas y estrategias de autoatención frente al Covid-19 en una familia de estrato socioeconómico alto en México. Desacatos. Revista De Ciencias Sociales, (72), 122–137. 
    3. Santillanes Allande, N I. y Tonatiuh González. (2023) Modelo de atención a la salud mental y atención en crisis de mujeres migrantes (En proceso). INMUJERES.
    4. Jenkins JH, Sanchez G, Miller EA, Santillanes Allande NI, Urano G, Pryor AJ. (2022) Depression and anxiety among multiethnic middle school students: Age, gender, and sociocultural environment. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2023 May;69(3):784-794. doi: 10.1177/00207640221140282. Epub 2022 Dec 18. PMID: 36529994; PMCID: PMC10152214.
    5. Santillanes Allande, N.I (2022). Models, protocols, and pathways, towards a social perspective in the mental health care of migrants in transit through Mexico. Journal Migration and Health. 2022 May 16;6:100113. doi: 10.1016/j.jmh.2022.100113. PMID: 35615465; PMCID: PMC9125649.
  • Szilvia Zörgő

    Szilvia Zörgő

    zorgoszilvia@gmail.com

    Szilvia is a Cultural Anthropologist with a doctorate in Mental Health Sciences from Semmelweis University (Budapest, Hungary). She was a Fulbright visiting scholar in 2017-2018 under the sponsorship of Prof. Thomas Csordas at the Department of Anthropology. Szilvia is currently on unpaid leave from her position as Assistant Professor of Medical Sociology at Semmelweis University to complete a three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellowship funded by the European Union. This grant was awarded to Szilvia in consortium with Maastricht University (the Netherlands) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). While her doctoral research focused on the sociocultural factors of therapy choice and patient decision-making, her current project (Smart Online Searching to Improve Patient Safety, SOS-TIPS) involves understanding how people search for and interpret health-related information online.

    PUBLICATIONS

    SOS-TIPS website
  • Amanda Miller

    Amanda Miller

    apmiller@sdsu.edu

    Dr. Amanda P. Miller, PhD, MS is a postdoctoral fellow at San Diego State University School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr Miller’s research focuses on addressing the intertwined epidemics of HIV, intimate partner violence (IPV), mental health disorders and substance use in low resource settings. Specifically, she is interested in applying mixed methods to understanding contextual and cultural barriers to optimal health outcomes among persons experiencing these interrelated health issues and developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions that are tailored to population and setting needs. Dr. Miller has ongoing research projects in South Africa and Uganda where access to mental health services and substance use treatment are limited. Among her more recent projects are a qualitative assessment of the acceptability, appropriateness and feasibility of adapting a transdiagnostic intervention to address mental health disorders and alcohol use among adolescent girls and young women who are living with HIV or at high risk of HIV infection in Uganda and a mixed methods body of work exploring drivers of perinatal alcohol use and experiences of intimate partner violence among pregnant women in south Africa and how these experiences impact HIV risk, prevention and treatment.

    Most relevant publications

    1. Miller, A.P., Mugamba, S., Bulamba, R.M., Kyasanku, E., Nkale, J., Nalugoda, F., Nakigozi, G., Kigozi, G., Nalwoga, G.K., Kagaayi, J., Watya, S., Wagman, J.A., 2022. Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on women’s alcohol use, mental health, and experiences of intimate partner violence in Wakiso, Uganda. Plos One 17(2).
    2. Miller, A.P., Espinosa da Silva, C., Ziegel, L., Mugamba, S., Kyasanku, E., Malyabe, R.B., Wagman, J.A., Ekström, A.M., Nalugoda, F., Kigozi, G., Nakigozi, G., Kagaayi, J., Watya, S., Kigozi, G., 2021. Construct validity and internal consistency of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) depression screening measure translated into two Ugandan languages. Psychiatry Research Communications.
    3. Miller, A.P., Ziegel, L., Mugamba, S., Kyasanku, E., Wagman, J.A., Nkwanzi-Lubega, V., Nakigozi, G., Kigozi, G., Nalugoda, F., Kigozi, G., Nkale, J., Watya, S., Ddaaki, W., 2021. Not Enough Money and Too Many Thoughts: Exploring Perceptions of Mental Health in Two Ugandan Districts Through the Mental Health Literacy Framework. Qualitative Health Research.
    4. Miller, A.P., Kintu, M., Kiene, S.M., 2020. Challenges in measuring depression among Ugandan fisherfolk: a psychometric assessment of the Luganda version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). BMC Psychiatry 20(1).
  • Hua Wu (Miranda)

    Hua Wu (Miranda)

    hua.wu@helsinki.fi

    Postdoc researcher, Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki 

    I am a psychological anthropology and received my Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego. My research is grounded in phenomenology and explores the intricate interplay between human emotion and embodiment. I study transformative experience, focusing on intergenerational dynamics and impact on mental health in living across rapid social changes in China. I work on intergenerational trauma, social precarity, and new forms of intimacy in everyday life and across lifespan.  

    For my postdoc research, I am part of the Irritation and human cooperation project research group, funded by European Research Consul. We explore how irritation are experienced and expressed in different cultures and how it may tell us about human sociality, motivation, morality, and cooperation. I conduct ethnographic research in Shanghai, focusing on the appraisal, expression, consequences, and function of irritation in newly emerged social relations and cultural contexts.