Personal information
Biography
I received my BA in anthropology from Reed College in 1994. My BA thesis analyzed the sociocultural significance of blood supplies, focusing especially on HIV risk and blood donor eligibility guidelines. As a staff research associate at the University of California in the 1990s, I conducted two years of ethnographic fieldwork with gay youth on the streets of San Francisco, looking closely at social knowledge related to sex and HIV. An abiding interest in the sociocultural symbolism of blood and body drew me to the ethnography of Melanesia. Fieldwork in 2000-01 & 2003 in highland Papua New Guinea focused on changing forms of gender, personhood, and exchange in the context of modernity. Highlanders often link their experiences of colonialism and Christian conversion with bodily diminishment, decaying vitality, and an increased risk of witchcraft. All three are encapsulated in a cultural motif: the shrinking of men's bodies.
I received my PhD in anthropology from Princeton University in 2004. After teaching for two years at the University of Helsinki, I joined Maynooth in 2008. For three years, I collaborated with the Combat Diseases of Poverty Consortium and East African students and colleagues to develop social research on health and illness in the developing world. Later, I went back to highland Papua New Guinea and conducted extensive fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, examining current witchcraft phenomena and how they reflect the unfulfilled promises of modernity.
My most recent academic work has been centered on sexuality and sexual liberty in Ireland. I organized an ethnographic workshop in my department at Maynooth that documented Ireland's abortion rights referendum in 2018. From 2019 to 2021, I conducted a significant ethnographic project on sex between men after Ireland's 2015 same-sex marriage referendum. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked with colleagues in Sydney and Auckland on a transnational comparative project on ideas about contagion and risk. I have been awarded grants by several funders, including the Social Science Research Council, Irish Research Council, National Science Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.