You may have noticed that activity on the blog has been fairly sparse. That’s not due to any shortage of issues related to medical anthropology in the news. Rather, it’s mainly because I’ve been busy with other things—like grading your essay exams.

So today I’m happy to introduce a new contributor to the blog, Brian Tyler. Brian is a doctoral student in anthropology. His dissertation research focuses on culture, trauma, and health in contemporary Guatemala. As he puts it:

Researchers across disciplines recognize that exposure to traumatic events can have serious consequences to both biological and psychological health. My research explores the sociocultural correlates of psychosocial stress and health, the nature of social suffering following decades of civil war, and the cultural mediation of individual and collective response to war-related traumatic experience. I am particularly interested in the social and cultural factors that mediate the impact of traumatic experience on individual mental and physical health outcomes.

Given these interests, it is fitting that Brian’s first post deals with the current controversy over the role of anthropologists in the U.S. military. In what’s left of the semester, you can look forward to hearing more from Brian about new research and current events related to the themes of the course.