Jessica Hardin

Jessica Hardin serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology within RIT's College of Liberal Arts, concurrently holding the Honorable Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Chair and directing International and Global Studies. Her anthropological work critically examines how structural inequalities manifest through intersections of medicine, religion, and chronic illness, particularly metabolic disorders in Pacific contexts.

Education:

• PhD in Anthropology, Brandeis University (2014)

Her research employs feminist methodologies to analyze moral dimensions of health risks among Pentecostal Christians in Samoa, informed by 2011-2012 fieldwork supported by Wenner Gren and Fulbright-Hays grants. She investigates how global health discourses on nutrition, fatness, and diabetes become entangled with religious identity and social visibility, revealing cultural specificities often overlooked in biomedical frameworks.

Recent publications demonstrate consistent focus on medical anthropology through Pacific Islander experiences, utilizing innovative approaches like metatheme analysis to compare cross-cultural obesity narratives. Her work bridges critical nutrition studies with anthropology of Christianity, highlighting how metabolic disorders become moral projects within Samoan Pentecostal communities.

Scientific Awards:

• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship
• Wenner Gren Foundation Fellowship

Hardin secured an NSF grant for diabetes decision-making research in Samoa and collaborates internationally on multi-sited projects like 'Fat in Four Cultures' examining weight perceptions across Samoa, Paraguay, Japan, and the US. She mentors students through courses including ANTH-244 (Disability Studies) and ANTH-246 (Gender and Health), with recent student co-authorships on ableism in engineering education.

Her research team integrates anthropologists, public health scholars, and local Samoan practitioners to examine how global health interventions interact with indigenous healing practices and religious frameworks in post-colonial contexts.