Nancy Rose Hunt

Nancy Rose Hunt is a Professor of History & African Studies at the University of Florida since 2016. She specializes in the history of madness, psychiatry, and mental health care in Africa, with a focus on colonial Congo and post-conflict regions like Bukavu. Her work bridges historiography, ethnography, and medical anthropology, addressing themes of securitization, migratory politics, and therapeutic insurgencies.

Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, Institute of Advanced Study in Paris, and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, among others. She co-edits the History and Theory journal and the book series Theory in Forms at Duke University Press.

Key publications include A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo (2016) and A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Work, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (1999). Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Martin A. Klein Prize.

Hunt has taught courses on African medical histories, historiography, and theory. She previously shaped the Joint PhD Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan. Her interdisciplinary projects include archival work on Congolese comic art and transnational health studies in Niger and Ghana.

Education: PhD in History, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1992); BA with Honors in Humanities, University of Chicago (1980).