Teaching Focus

I deeply enjoy teaching broadly from undergraduate to post-graduate levels including clinical interns, residents and specialists in for example neurology, psychiatry and clinical psychology. I have diverse research, training and education in multidisciplinary subjects and pursue a highly inclusive, multi-modal and multidisciplinary teaching practice.

Teaching areas of primary focus include: Global Health Inequality (Psychiatric and Neuropsychological Medicine), Public/International and Global Health, Socio/Cultural and Medical Anthropology, Public Policy, Health Education, Health Leadership, Development studies, Medical Humanities, Area Studies (Southern Africa and North America), Research Methods/Statistics, Social Theory and/or special topics courses based on my areas of expertise, clinical training and research outputs.

Sample Course Descriptions

Health, Illness & Medicine: Through Art, Writing, and Movement

This transdisciplinary course examines what it means to be human through the lenses of health, illness, disability and the body. Students will undertake small group extemporaneous and experimental exploration through creative, experiential and ethnographic art, movement and scholarly praxis. Students will immerse in art, narrative, and embodied practices to illuminate diverse and often misunderstood lived experiences of medicine, illness and healing. By engaging deeply with literature, visual arts, and movement-based immersions, students will approach holistically the multi-faceted depictions of health, illness and medicine while proposing, developing and submitting self-directed creative, experiential and reflective projects.

Deleuze, Butler, Foucault & Marx: Exploring Gender, Identity, and Meaning in Transformative Times

This seminar examines the diverse and often surprising intersections of anthropology, clinical psychology, philosophy, and critical theory to explore the evolving constructs of gender, identity, and societal transformation in a time of historically significant change and upheaval. Drawing on Jung’s insights into the unconscious, Deleuze’s philosophy of becoming, Butler’s theories of gender performativity, Foucault’s critiques of power and discourse, and Marx’s analysis of social change, students will investigate how individual and collective identities are formed and reconfigured during times of upheaval, change, crises and transformation. Through rigorous small group discussion, close readings, and reflective practice, this course challenges students to critically engage with these foundational thinkers and probe the self, others and the everyday, especially as concentered with multidiverse individual, group and societal presentations of identity, gender, sex, culture, political and interrelated contexts.

Ethnographic Writing in the Everyday

This course focuses on experiential practices of ethnography and writing in the art of observing and writing about the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life to uncover profound insights about self, others, culture and society. Students will learn ethnographic methods (visual, sensory, writing and multi-diverse) while refining critical thinking, expository and creative methodology skills. Student will explore the field of anthropology and related social sciences through the hands-on experiential practice of participant observation and field notes. Student will explore the story and narrative and learn how to craft compelling narratives of multi-diverse forms. This course creative multi-diverse storytelling and challenges students to examine the intersections of personal and collective experience, power, and meaning in everyday life.

Teaching Approach

I am particularly interested in facilitating experimental and inclusive pedagogy, learning and teaching practices in multi-modal, cross-disciplinary and experimental courses, particularly focusing on social, economic, cultural and political themes. I am excited about teaching innovative methodologies in visualizing multi-disciplinary phenomena whether in graphical information systems (GIS), artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), novel approaches to qualitative analysis and similarly situated multi-modal approaches.

I have a pointed interest in teaching which also focuses on global social medicine/global health, pluralistic health systems, healing in scarcities, dis-ease, authority, inequality and on the materiality of built and socially constructed spaces/places, particularly in relation to spaces of healing such as the clinic.