Supporting Team from ASU & NAU

Alexandra Brewis

Regents Professor and President's Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Alexandra Brewis (Slade)*, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and Regent's Professor & President’s Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. She is currently senior editor (Medical Anthropology) for Social Science and Medicine, and previously served as President of the Human Biology Association. As an ASU administrator, she founded the Center for Global Health in 2006, served as Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (2010-2017), and as ASU's Associate Vice President for Social Sciences (2014-2017). 

Brewis' research is focused on solutions to complex global health and environmental challenges. Current efforts based on field research coalesce around three primary problems.

  • When and how we should - or shouldn't - be tackling the "problem" of "obesity."

  • Improving household water insecurity for the millions of households globally that do not have adequate and safe access. 

  • Reducing unintentional stigma in global health practice.

Trained in human biology, demography, and medical anthropology, she typically works in large, diverse, collaborative teams – including academics in other fields, local communities, international development agencies, and private institutions like hospitals or NGOs. Brewis' projects are based in many parts of the globe, including recently in Ethiopia, Haiti, Zambia, and close to home in Arizona.

Her research program has produced 8 authored books, 5 edited volumes, and ~250 journal articles. One recent book is the prize-winning Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health, described in reviews as a "boundary-breaking book that should be required reading for anyone interested in public health, medicine, and anthropology. It stands as an exemplar for public scholarship." Brewis is also lead author of The Human Story: An Introduction to Anthropology, a major collaborative effort to introduce anthropology to the next generation of students. 

Recognitions include election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Conrad M. Arensberg Award of the American Anthropological Association honoring an individual who has furthered anthropology as a natural science, and the Franz Boas Distinguished Achievement Award of the Human Biology Association.

Visit Professor Brewis' personal web page for much more detail about her bio/background, lab, research, teaching, and outreach activities. 

*Alex prefers to go professionally by Alexandra Brewis, but her legal name is Alexandra Slade. Various hiccups in techno-bureaucracy means her name turns up in different systems as Brewis, Brewis Slade (no hyphen), Brewis-Slade (hyphen), and Slade. She happily answers to them all.

Education

  • Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Arizona 1992

  • M.A. Anthropology, University of Auckland 1988

  • B.A. Anthropology, University of Auckland 1986