Bonnie Hewlett

Bonnie Hewlett is a Scholarly Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Washington State University Vancouver. She holds a PhD from WSU and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia, including a Fulbright Fellowship (2010-2011). Her research focuses on bio-cultural contexts of infectious diseases, hunter-gatherer societies, adolescent development, and the experiences of Ethiopian orphans. She co-authored Ebola, Culture, Politics and edited Secret Lives of Anthropologists, among other works.

Her research interests include medical anthropology, evolutionary cultural anthropology, and ethnographic life narratives. Notable projects include studies on Aka forager and Ngandu farmer adolescents, Chabu forager-farmers in Ethiopia, and the socio-emotional development of hunter-gatherer youth. She has also investigated caregiver-child interactions in Ethiopian orphanages and the cultural models of disease in Central Africa.

Hewlett’s publications analyze topics such as social learning mechanisms in hunter-gatherer societies, cultural transmission of knowledge, and the intersection of anthropology with emerging diseases like Ebola. Her work emphasizes biocultural approaches to understanding human behavior and health across diverse populations.

Her research projects span the African Research Group, Chabu forager-farmer studies, and health-related initiatives like the Onchocerciasis and Schistosomiasis control projects in Cameroon. She collaborates with institutions in Ethiopia and Japan, contributing to global anthropological discourse on culture, health, and development.