Ramah McKay

Ramah McKay is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, affiliated with the Department of Anthropology under the School of Arts & Sciences. Her work intersects history of medicine, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS), focusing on the relationships between knowledge-making, care work, and humanitarian interventions.

• PhD, Stanford University

Her research explores how humanitarian and scientific actors use data to conceptualize habitable places, and how cleaning and care work reframe livability in climate change contexts. She applies critical and decolonial research methods to analyze transnational medical projects, particularly in Mozambique, emphasizing the often-invisible labor sustaining global health interventions.

Recent publications examine planetary health policy, pharmaceutical regulation, and urban health systems. As Director of Graduate Studies, she mentors students in ethnography, history of science, and STS, though no specific advisees are named in the provided texts.

She is the author of Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique (2018), which traces how global health projects depend on everyday care practices, and contributes to debates on critical global health studies as a co-editor of a special issue. Her teaching includes courses like Global Health Technologies and Feminist STS, and she is affiliated with the Center for Africana Studies.