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The Heath, Mind and Society programmes events which reflect the diversity of the initiative, with regular seminars, lectures, debates and conferences through the year.
Mal-Nutrition. Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm by Emily Yates-Doerr (Winner of the Rachel Carson Prize 2025)
Date: 9th July 5-6.30pm
Location: Daryll Forde Seminar Room, Anthropology Department, 14 Taviton Street,London and online (hybrid)
Book tickets
About the event:
SHS Health, Mind and Society and UCL Grand Challenges supported Anthropocene Sustenance project teams is delighted to host this book launch event with Emily Yates Doerr who will talk about her recently published monograph ‘Mal-Nutrition. Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm’. The book documents how maternal health interventions in Guatemala are complicit in reproducing poverty. This thought provoking and timely book shows that the control of mothering is paradigmatic technique of American violence that serves to control the reproduction of privilege and power. It explores the efforts of Guatemalan scientists, midwives and mothers to counter the harms of such mal-nutrition. Their powerful stories offer a window into a form of nutrition science and policy that encourage collective nourishment and fosters reproductive cycles in which women, children and their entire communities can flourish (adapted from back jacket of book).
We will also have comments from Ann Kelly (Anthropology Dept, University of Oxford) and Cicely Marsten (Dept of Primary Health Care Sciences, University of Oxford) followed by audience Q and A.
Speaker Biography:
Emily Yates-Doerr is an anthropologist at Oregon State University whose research is at the intersections of feminist science studies, medical anthropology, and food studies. Her previous books include The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala (University of California Press, 2015) and the edited volume The Ethnographic Case: Telling Stories, Shaping Knowledge (Mattering Press, 2023). She holds a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from New York University and recently completed an ERC Starting Grant on global maternal health interventions, based at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently conducting research on memories of nuclear weapons testing and chemical contamination in the United States.
Emily’s book is free to download at UCPress site here: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/mal-nutrition/paper.