Andrea Kaiser-Grolimund

Dr. Andrea Kaiser-Grolimund serves as a recurring lecturer in medical anthropology at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, and works as a project coordinator at the Institute of Nursing Sciences. She is also a postdoctoral scientific collaborator at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and holds an honorary research fellowship at Durham University's Department of Anthropology. Her interdisciplinary work bridges anthropology and public health through the Medical Anthropology Research Group (MARG), where she leads the 'health' key area at the Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, alongside Danelle van Zyl-Hermann.

Her academic background includes:

• BA in Social Anthropology and Law (2008) from University of Basel and University of Lausanne
• MA from the Center for African Studies (2010)
• PhD completed in 2018 with dissertation 'The New Old Urbanites. Care and Transnational Aging in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania'

Dr. Kaiser-Grolimund's research focuses on medical anthropology, particularly examining care practices across transnational spaces, One Health approaches, and the social dimensions of aging. Her ethnographic work explores how middle-class elderly populations in Tanzania navigate healthcare systems with transnational connections to the United States and Oman. She combines anthropological methods with public health frameworks to investigate care networks, aging experiences, and health policy implementation in global contexts.

Analysis of her publication record reveals a consistent trajectory from her doctoral work on transnational aging toward broader applications of medical anthropology in public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Her recent work demonstrates increasing methodological innovation, particularly in digital approaches for real-time public health data collection. The publications show strong interdisciplinary collaboration across anthropology, nursing science, epidemiology, and genetics.

Dr. Kaiser-Grolimund has led significant research initiatives including the CASCADE study on family communication around hereditary cancers (2018-2019), the PubliCo project on pandemic perceptions (2020-2022), and currently coordinates the SNSF-funded EPICENTRE-PARTICIPATIO project. She contributes to the ERC-funded ALIVEAfrica project investigating One Health policy design and the FarmCoSwiss long-term health study on agricultural communities.

She maintains active research networks including the Medical Anthropology Research Group and previously coordinated the Anthro-Zoonoses Network at Durham University. Her collaborative work spans institutions across Switzerland, the UK, Tanzania, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, reflecting her commitment to international, interdisciplinary research addressing global health challenges through anthropological perspectives.