Claudia Lang

Claudia Lang serves as Associate Professor for Anthropology and Health at both Leipzig University and Maastricht University, with her primary institutional base at Leipzig's Institute of Ethnology. Her academic journey includes a Heisenberg Fellowship at Leipzig University (2019-2024), multiple visiting professorships, and extensive research positions focused on mental health anthropology.

Lang's research centers on the interface between mental health and social life, with particular emphasis on India. Her work examines how mental health concepts are localized and transformed within different cultural contexts, especially regarding depression in Kerala. She explores the intersection of traditional medicine (particularly Ayurveda) with biomedical mental health practices, digital innovations in mental healthcare, and the emerging field of ecological grief in climate-changed environments. Her research methodology is primarily ethnographic, involving deep fieldwork with designers, users, and practitioners.

Lang's publications reveal consistent themes across medical anthropology, global mental health, and digital health innovations. Her work shows increasing attention to how digital tools are reshaping mental healthcare practices in non-Western contexts, while simultaneously examining how environmental changes affect mental wellbeing through frameworks of ecological grief. This dual focus represents a significant contribution to expanding mental health discourse beyond anthropocentric frameworks.

• Heisenberg Fellowship (2019-2024)
• Author of 'Depression in Kerala. Ayurveda and mental health care in the 21st century' (Routledge, 2018)
• Co-author of 'Global Health for All: Knowledge, Politics, and Practices' (Rutgers, 2022)
• Co-author of 'The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia' (Amsterdam University Press, 2021)

Lang actively supervises students and has developed courses on medical anthropology of South Asia, research methods, and anthropology of mental health. Her current research projects investigate digital mental health innovations in India and the experience of ecological grief in climate-changed environments, aiming to develop a concept of environmental mental health that moves beyond anthropocentric notions.