May 7, 2026 
Weaving Images of Healing: Caring for the Ancestors of the Future 
Join us for the public opening of the exhibition Weaving Images of Healing: Caring for the Ancestors of the Future at The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford by Ph.D. Catalina Alvarado-Cañuta. Catalina’s work and this exhibit help us think about Indigenous rights and the role of art in healing the legacies of ongoing colonial violence.

April 14, 2026 
Integrating Art into Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Participatory Action Research (PAR) 
Co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department. 
Renowned anthropologist Dr. Jean J. Schensul shares insights from decades of methodologically pioneering community-based research, highlighting how art and collaborative methods can advance equity, strengthen communities, and extend impact beyond academia.

December 6, 2025 
“The People’s Migrant School”
In collaboration with Hartford Deportation Defense.  
Students will present their research on ICE to community members, allies, and academics at the Hartford Park Street Library. The event will help strengthen a partnership with Hartford Deportation Defense (HDD) by demonstrating how our research and that of our students can support the organization’s goals and ongoing work. It will also provide a valuable learning opportunity for students while deepening engagement with our community partners.

October 7, 2025 
Eugenics, Statistics, and AI: From Past to Present 
Hosted by Humanitarianism. 
Dr. Craig Spencer (Brown University SPH) looks back at the history of eugenics in medicine to explore how lessons from the past can teach us about the persistent legacies of unethical practices, and to contextualize the risks of AI’s growing use in healthcare today.

October 17, 2024 
Projecte Úter: An Interactive Workshop on Visual & Oral Storytelling  
Join artist and organizer Carles García O’Dowd in an interactive workshop on the Úter Project, a collaborative drawing initiative dedicated to sexual and reproductive freedom, exploring personal stories and community connections around abortion and bodily autonomy.

October 11, 2024 
With the Future on our Backs: The Tied Mobilities of Monarch and Human Migrants  
Prof. Columba González-Duarte (The New School) discusses migration and time-making projects, exploring the interconnectedness of human and animal movement through a multispecies lens.

April 16, 2024 
Fundamental Insecurity and Unintended Harms of Care in Rural New England 
In collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Human Development & Family Sciences.   
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song draws upon longitudinal ethnographic research centered on housing precarity and mental health among families in rural New England. Over time, she observes oscillating rhythms of stability and instability within families as they face persistent threats to their housing security, grapple with making ends meet on service sector wages, and encounter isolation and stigma within rural communities.

April 4, 2024 
‘Künü: A Space for Dialogue’ with Filmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo 
Co-sponsored by the Buen Vivir & Collective Healings Initiative, El Instituto, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Digital Media & Design, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Native American Cultural Programs. 
lmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo captures the collaborative efforts of 80 Mapuche communities to reclaim part of their ancestral lands from a large transnational forestry company in Chile, Araucanía-Loncoche region.

April 3, 2024 
Visual Power: Harnessing Art, Design, and Collaborative Filmmaking in Participatory Global Health Research 
Sara Baumann introduces collaborative filmmaking during this lunchtime seminar. Her presentation showcases a participatory visual research project called “Art Heals,” which explores the role of public art in recovery, healing, and community building.
 

December 5, 2023 
Trauma-Informed Interviewing: A Workshop For Field Researchers 
Join Prof. of Social Work Megan Berthold and Prof. Emeritus of Pharmacy Tom Buckley for an interactive workshop on trauma-informed interviewing for field researchers. This workshop was developed with the needs of graduate students and faculty in mind, though others are welcome to join. Berthold and Buckley have extensive experience working with refugees, asylum seekers, Cambodian survivors of genocide, and others who have suffered war-related atrocities, both in the U.S. and abroad. Now both working in clinical settings, Berthold and Buckley have ample experience in training those who work with people who have experienced trauma.

November 7, 2023 
Longing for Healing: An Art-Based Project with Victims of the Armed Conflict in Colombia 
Using a Participatory Action Research approach, two associations of victims of the armed conflict in the Colombian Amazon were invited to recreate dreams and memories guided by the idea of Buen Vivir (a good, harmonious, and beautiful way of living) and Vivir Sabroso (living joyfully). The final art piece, “Casa Común,” is a collective display of individual pieces created through embroidery and painting. Casa Común serves as an emotional space and archive where healing and reconciliation with violent pasts and presents involve water, plants, and animals, as well as the desire to live joyfully while carrying pains that will never go away.

October 10, 2023 
Injuries of Empire: Detention and Debilitation in South Florida 
Co-sponsored by El Instituto, the Department of Anthropology, and UConn’s American Studies. 
In this public lecture, Dr. Emma Shaw Crane (Society of Fellows, Columbia University) discusses the racialized hazards experienced by asylum-seeking children at a South Florida detention camp. Between 2016 and 2019, Crane worked with migrant and asylum-seeking children who were detained at the Homestead Temporary Shelter, a detention camp just south of Miami, Florida. Though ostensibly a place of humanitarian refuge, detained children were separated from their families and exposed to harmful sounds and toxic debris from an adjacent military base. This talk takes up racialized hazard at the detention camp in relation to the adjacent military base, a crucial node in the hemispheric circulation of weapons, soldiers, and military expertise.

October 10, 2023 
Research Justice Against Migrant Detention 
Co-sponsored by El Instituto, the Department of Anthropology, and UConn’s American Studies. 
Following her lecture on Injuries of Empire, Dr. Emma Shaw Crane (Society of Fellows, Columbia University) joins us for a lunchtime seminar on collaborative social movement research. This conversation will reflect on collaborative social movement research, with a particular focus on ethnographic and spatial research with movements for the abolition of migrant detention. We will explore the principles and practices of “research justice,” an approach to knowledge production that seeks to be accountable to movements for freedom and self-determination.

April 11, 2023 
Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital 
Join us for a panel celebrating Professor César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero’s new book, Health in Ruins, which chronicles the story of El Materno—Colombia’s oldest maternity and neonatal health center and teaching hospital—over several decades as it faced constant threats of government shutdown. 

October 31, 2022 
Grassroots Collaborative Ethnography and Archival Activism as Human Rights Research Strategies 
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. 
Join us for one or all lectures in this three-part series on “Critical, Community-Engaged Approaches in Medical Anthropology,” sponsored by the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights. We invite participants to read the pre-circulated readings. Check below for details on the three events by experts in the field. 

October 24, 2022 
Activists/Scholars from Latin America at the Intersection of Medical Anthropology & Social Medicine 
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. 
Join us for one or all lectures in this three-part series on “Critical, Community-Engaged Approaches in Medical Anthropology,” sponsored by the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights. We invite participants to read the pre-circulated readings. Check below for details on the three events by experts in the field. 

October 17, 2022 
Multi-gazed Ethnographies: Community Photographs and Narratives of the Heroin Epidemic in Colombia 
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. 
Join us for one or all lectures in this three-part series on “Critical, Community-Engaged Approaches in Medical Anthropology,” sponsored by the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights. We invite participants to read the pre-circulated readings. Check below for details on the three events by experts in the field. 

May 8, 2020 – CANCELED
Faculty Debrief of the Pandemic and its Effect

March 23, 2020 
Accountability in Global Health: An Historical Perspective 
This lecture is part of “The Heinz and Virginia Herrmann Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights and the Life Sciences” 
To whom are the designers and implementers of global health programs accountable? How have patterns of accountability changed over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries? What kinds of mechanisms, metrics, and evidence have been used to account for, or demonstrate the results of health interventions? What counts as success or failure? These are the questions to be examined in this talk, which will trace the history of accountability in global health over the past century. 
Speaker: Dr. Randall Packard, Ph.D. (William H. Welch Professor of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) 

March 10, 2020 – CANCELED 
Discussion of Herrmann Distinguished Lecturer Randall Packard’s Book “A History of Global Health” 

February 25, 2020 – CANCELED 
Presentation: “Engaged Anthropology and Community Based Action Research” 
Co-sponsored by the Ethnographic Research Colloquium in the Department of Anthropology. 
Speaker: Jen Sandler (UMass Alliance for Community Transformation/ UMass Amherst) 

December 3, 2019 
Discussion of Project “From Environmental Degradation to Buen Vivir: Using Participatory Action Research to Promote Community Auto Sustainability While Protecting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” 
Speakers: PIs César Abadía-Barrero, Alejandro Reyes and Vanesa Giraldo-Gartner 

October 31, 2019 
Faculty Discussion of “Flourishing” and “Buen Vivir” 
Combined with S. Willen’s seminar ANTH 3038: “Flourishing & Well-being in Interdiscipinary Perspective” 

October 17, 2019 
Lecture: “Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Migrant Families” 
Co-sponsored by El Instituto. 
Speaker: Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida) 

October 17, 2019 
Book Celebration of “Fighting for Dignity” 
Co-sponsored by German Studies. 
Panelists: Jennifer Hirsch (Mailman School of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia), Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida), and Tally Amir (Harvard University / College of Law and Business, Israel) 

October 17, 2019 
Discussion of Research Design and Preliminary Findings from ARCHES 
Lunchtime seminar with Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida, William Tootle (UConn PhD Student) and Sarah Willen to discuss research design and preliminary findings from ARCHES | the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study. 

October 15, 2019 
Faculty Group Discussion of “Willen’s Fighting for Dignity” 

September 11, 2019 
Faculty Group Discussion of “Galea’s Well” 

February 20, 2018 
Lunchtime Seminar: “Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States”
Speakers: Dr. Jessica Mulligan and Dr. Heidi Castañeda

November 27, 2017 
Lunchtime Seminar: “What is (Good) Care? HIV and Narrative Navigation in Aceh, Indonesia” 
Speaker: Dr. Annemarie Samuels (Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology; Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University) 

November 10, 2017 
Book Discussion of “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back” 
Core faculty members met to discuss Elisabeth Rosenthal’s book. 

November 2, 2017 
Panel: “Physicians for Human Rights” 
Recipients of the 2017 Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights. 

October 17, 2017 
Lecture: “Ensuring Immigrant Workers’ Safety: What Ethnography Can Contribute” 
Co-sponsored by the Ethnographic Research Colloquium in the Department of Anthropology. 
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Horton (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado) 

October 17, 2017 
Lunchtime Seminar: “Invisible Deaths: The Methodological and Evidentiary” 
Co-sponsored by the Ethnographic Research Colloquium in the Department of Anthropology and El Instituto. 
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Horton (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado)
Challenges of Researching Heat Stroke in a ‘Hidden Population.’

October 3, 2017 
Lecture: “Reproductive Rights and Development in the Global South” 
Co-sponsored by the Ethnographic Research Colloquium in the Department of Anthropology, the Political Science Department, and Economic & Social Rights.
Speaker: Dr. Takiyah Harper-Shipman (Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University)

April 4, 2017 
Lunchtime Seminar: “Whose Health Matters? Reflections on an Emerging Study of Health, Inequity, and Values in the Wake of the 2016 U.S. Election” 

March 6, 2017 
Faculty Discussion on Two Books

1. Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice: New Conversations across the Disciplines (Buchbinder, Rivkin-Fish, and Walker, eds.) – several chapters 
2. Introduction to The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, which is garnering wide acclaim as a prescient study of widespread political sentiments that contributed to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections. 

February 21, 2017 
Lecture: “Narkomania: Drug Use, Sovereignty, and New Forms of Statecraft in Ukraine” 
Speaker: Jennifer Carroll (Brown University)  

February 21, 2017 
Lunchtime Seminar: Drug Use and Human Right Abuses in Ukraine 
Speaker: Jennifer Carroll (Brown University)   

October 20, 2016 
Lecture: “Invoking a Human Right to Abortion in Mexico: Feminist Strategies in and around the Nation-State” 
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. 
Speaker: Elyse Ona Singer, Ph.D. Candidate (Washington University in Saint Louis) 

September 22, 2016 
Lecture: “Health Implications of European Responses to the Refugee Situation” 
Speaker: Michael Knipper (Uni Giessen, Germany) 

September 22, 2016 
Workshop on Migration, Health, and Human Rights 
Speakers: César Abadía-Barrero, Kathryn Libal, and Sarah Willen. 

September 20, 2016 
Faculty Discussion of “Global Health, Human Rights and the Challenge of Neoliberal Policies” 
Faculty, lunchtime gathering with Audrey Chapman to discuss select chapters from her new book, Global Health, Human Rights and the Challenge of Neoliberal Policies (Cambridge UP, 2016). 

March 2, 2016
Panel Discussion: Health, Equity, and Human Rights: What’s the Added Value of a Rights-Based Approach?
What is a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to health? How can HRBAs strengthen efforts by community based organizations and other health advocates to tackle the grave health disparities, inequalities, and inequities facing our city, our state, and our nation? 
Panelists: Alicia Ely Yamin (Harvard), Audrey Chapman (UConn Health Center), and Alice Miller (Yale) — and Hartford’s own Grace Damio, a veteran community health practitioner, researcher, and advocate (Hispanic Health Council). 

April 12, 2016 
Can We Stop Talking about Birth Control Yet?’ ‘Gypsy’ Bodies as European Problems
Why does Europe care so much about Romani (“Gypsy”) birth control methods? Since joining the European Union (EU) in 2007, Bulgaria has been required to implement EU-mandated health and social integration policies. One response to this mandate has involved programs centering on Romani women and, in particular, their reproductive health. In effect, Romani women’s bodies and choice of birth control have become vehicles for Bulgaria to achieve EU-mandated goals regarding human rights and minority integration. Drawing on participant-observation with Romani women street sweepers and local NGO representatives, Resnick will discuss how Romani women interpret European Union health policies, especially in light of recent anti-Roma protests that emphasize “saving” the Bulgarian state from “Gypsy overpopulation.” 
Speaker: Elana Resnick, Ph.D. Candidate (Anthropology, University of Michigan) 

December 3, 2015 
The European “Migration Crisis” and the Human Right to Health: Observations from Germany
According to current estimates, Germany expects to receive up to 1 million refugees and asylum seekers in 2015. Feelings of “crisis” are omnipresent. Growing concerns involve the country’s capacity to respond, the possibility of growing xenophobia, and new forms of pressure on German society’s moral and civic values. What does the “human right to health” mean when unexpected numbers of immigrants must be received, accommodated, and provided assistance and health care? To what extent does Germany — a country proud of its high level of social, economic and political development and the rule of law — comply with internationally established human rights standards on its own soil? This presentation will offer a personal account based on ongoing participant observation in the city of Giessen, which hosts one of the largest reception centers for refugees in Germany. 
Speaker: Michael Knipper, MD, Ph.D. (Justus Leibig University, Giessen, Germany)

October 27, 2015 
Lecture: “Kangaroo Mother Care: A Post-Colonial Medical Innovation” 
UCHI Fellows Formal Talk 
Speaker: Cesar Abadia-Barrero

September 23, 2015 
Dignifying Labor? Race-Gender Discrimination, Childbirth, and the European Court of Human Rights 
Speaker: Nimu Njoya (Williams College)

April 1, 2015 
The Ethics of Constrained Choice: Improved Health During Incarceration 
Co-sponsored by the Center for Correctional Health Networks (CCHNet) at UConn School of Nursing.
Speaker: Robert Trestman, Ph.D., MD (Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Nursing at UConn Health Center; Director of UConn Health Correctional Managed Health Care (CMHC))

March 12, 2015 
Migrants, Refugees, and the Human Right to Health in Germany 
Co-sponsored by German Studies.
Given the dramatic rise in the number of refugees in Germany, especially from Syria, discussions about migrants’ and refugees’ health and entitlement to health care are becoming increasingly prominent in that country and in Europe more broadly. This presentation will consider the potential of a human rights approach in responding to migrants’ health needs in the German context, with special attention to the close links among legal and medical perspectives on health and human rights.
Speaker: Michael Knipper, MD, Ph.D. (University Lecturer for Medical History, Anthropology, and Ethics at the Institute of the History of Medicine at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany; Visiting Researcher at Harvard Medical School) 

November 20, 2014 
Public Health Challenges in an Ever-Changing Brazil 
Co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department, the Institute for Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention (InChip), and El Instituto. 
Speaker: José Ricardo de Carvalho Mesquita Ayres, MD, PhD (University of São Paolo & Princeton University) 

November 6, 2014 
All Eyes on Egypt: Religion and the Medical use of Dead Bodies Amidst Cairo’s Political Unrest 
Co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the Medical Anthropology Forum. 
Speaker: Sherine Hamdy, PhD (Brown University) 

September 4, 2014 
Core Health Obligations from the Perspectives of Human Rights and Public Health 
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention (InChip). 
Speaker: Audrey R. Chapman, PhD (UConn Health) 

April 22, 2013 
Moral Progress – Again: Harm Reduction and the Repetition of the State in Human Rights Practices
Speaker: Dr. Jarrett Zigon

April 11, 2013 
Incarcerated Women and Reproductive Health Care: Opportunities and Challenges for a Vulnerable Population
Speaker: Dr. Carolyn Sufrin (UCSF/UC Berkeley)

April 10, 2013
Film Screening and Panel: “Women Behind Bars” 

April 9, 2013
Discipline and Care: Health Rights in a U.S. Women’s Jail
Speaker: Dr. Carolyn Sufrin (UCSF/UC Berkeley)

April 3, 2008 
The Genome, Eugenics, and Human Rights 
This lecture is part of “The Heinz and Virginia Herrmann Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights and the Life Sciences” 
Speaker: Dr. Daniel J. Kevles
Dr. Kevles is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History and Professor of History of Medicine, of American Studies, and of Law (adjunct), and Chair of the Program in the History of Medicine & Science at Yale University. He received his B.A. from Princeton University (Physics) in 1960, training at Oxford University (European History) from 1960-61, and his Ph.D. from Princeton (History) in 1964. His research interests include: the interplay of science and society past and present; the history of science in America; the history of modern physics; the history of modern biology, scientific fraud and misconduct; the history of intellectual property in living organisms; and the history of science, arms, and the state.
Dr. Kevles is the author or co-author of many books and articles including “In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity” which has been published in many countries, and “The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character” (W.W. Norton, 1998). His teaching areas are the history of modern science, including genetics, physics, and science in American society.

April 4, 2007 
Race and Science: New Challenges to an Old Problem 
This lecture is part of “The Heinz and Virginia Herrmann Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights and the Life Sciences” 
Speaker: Dr. Evelynn M. Hammonds
Dr. Hammonds is Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University where she is also Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. Her work has been featured nationally in the PBS documentary “Race: The Power of an Illusion.”

November 8, 2006 
Of Mice and Humans: Creating Human-Nonhuman Chimeras in Stem Cell Research 
This lecture is part of “The Heinz and Virginia Herrmann Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights and the Life Sciences” 
Speaker: Dr. Cynthia Cohen
Faculty Affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and Fellow of the Hastings Center. Dr. Cohen is a member of the Canadian Stem Cell Oversight Committee, former Executive Director of the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction, and former Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Denver.

October 18, 2006 
Human Dignity – Trump Card and Troublemaker 
First annual lecture of “The Heinz and Virginia Herrmann Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights and the Life Sciences”
Speaker: Dr. Karen Lebacqz
Dr. Lebacqz is an internationally known bioethicist with special expertise in stem cell ethics. She has served as commissioner on the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and is known as a co-author of the famous Belmont Report.