Professor and Department Chair, Anthropology

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Thurka Sangaramoorthy Professor and Department Chair, Anthropology CAS | ANTH | Anthropology

Degrees: PhD, University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco
MPH, Columbia University
Bio: Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a cultural and medical anthropologist and global health expert with over 25 years of experience in community-engaged ethnographic research across the United States, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Her work focuses on the intersections of power, subjectivity, and care in global health systems, addressing issues like migration, infectious diseases, and environmental health disparities.

Dr. Sangaramoorthy is a co-investigator on an NIH R01 structural racism grant, working with migrant advocacy organizations to study health disparities among farmworkers through legal, public health, and anthropological approaches. She is also part of the Global FEWture Alliance, a multidisciplinary initiative aimed at developing technology and policy solutions for the Food-Energy-Water nexus to enhance climate resilience and global public health.

Her prolific authorship 69��ý three books: Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (2023), Rapid Ethnographic Assessments (2020), and Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention (2014). She is completing a fourth, She’s Positive: The Extraordinary Lives of Black Women Living with HIV. Her public-facing scholarship has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes Magazine, Newsweek and The Washington Post.

Dr. Sangaramoorthy serves on editorial boards for 69��ý Anthropologist, Social Science & Medicine, and the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. She has held leadership roles in the 69��ý Anthropological Association and other professional organizations.

She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco, an M.P.H. from Columbia University, and postdoctoral training in infectious diseases and health equity at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a professor and chair of anthropology at 69��ý University, she co-directs the joint SIS-CAS Global Health and Culture certificate program and serves as Distinguished Faculty for the NSF-funded Cultural Anthropology Methods Program. Additionally, she is an Affiliate Professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

From 2022–2024, Dr. Sangaramoorthy coordinated the US refugee response in Sudan and South Sudan for the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, addressing the world’s largest displacement crises as part of the Horn of Africa Regional Refugee Team at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Her extensive contributions exemplify a career dedicated to advancing equity, health, and resilience through research, advocacy, public service, and leadership.

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