Africa Initiative

Health, Healing and Ritual Practice

Convener: Allan G. Hill
Members: Emmanuel Akyeampong, Majid Ezzati, Duana Fullwiley, Arthur Kleinman, John Mugane, Kay Shelemay, Wafaie Fawzi

Current Projects

"Street children, street culture, sexuality and language shifts with the vernacularizing of disease" (Leaders: John Mugane & Emmanuel Akyeampong). A two-day meeting involving centrally important scholars and actors in the field that aims to create the basis of a longer term research project on this topic.

"Health transitions: new formulations of illnesses and their treatment" (Leaders: Allan G. Hill, Emmanuel Akyeampong & Kay Shelemay) Breaking away from the more epidemiological approach, this project explores African therapeutic systems and the importance of established approaches to healing such as ritual, music, and herbs, to healing with a special emphasis on Ethiopians in the USA. Both indigenous therapies and faith healing will be examined in this context.

Upcoming Speakers at the Harvard Africa Seminar

"Republic of Therapy: Social Triage in Francophone West Africa in a Time of AIDS," Vinh-kim Nguyen, Dept. of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Montreal, February 6, 2008, 4:15 - 6:00 pm.

Sloane Mahone, Trauma & Personhood: The Photographic Legacy of Dr. Edward Marge MD in the 1950's Kenya. Lecturer in the History of Medicine; Deputy Director, Welcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford University, March 18, 2008, 4:15-6:00 pm.

Publication of a volume drawn from the December 2006 workshop on Politics, Violence and Health: Mental Illness in Africa.

Topics include, among others, Culture and Madness; Violence and its Aftermath; HIV-AIDS and Mental Health; Interpreting Mental Illness: Common Mental Disorders in Community and Primary Care Treatment.