Lamia Moghnie

Lamia Moghnie is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, and a key member of the Centre for Culture and the Mind. She is a medical anthropologist and mental health practitioner whose research critically explores the intersection of psychiatry, subjectivity, and societal understandings of suffering in postcolonial and post-conflict societies across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA/SWANA). Her work interrogates the global standardization of mental health diagnostics and the local lived experiences of trauma, resilience, and resistance.

• PhD in Social Work and Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2016
• MSW, American University of Beirut, 2011
• MA in Psychology (Clinical Specialization), American University of Beirut, 2009
• MA in Social Sciences, University of Chicago, 2006

Her research interests include medical anthropology, global mental health, the anthropology of violence and suffering, humanitarian psychiatry, science and technology studies, ethnographic and archival methodologies, and medical humanities. She critically examines how Western-centric psychiatric frameworks often fail to capture the complexity of everyday suffering in non-Western contexts, advocating for alternative epistemologies and decolonial approaches.

Her recent publications explore themes such as institutional psychiatry in 1950s Lebanon, the politics of trauma and resilience in Palestine and Lebanon, the historical roots of madness in the Middle East, and the use of science fiction (e.g., Octavia Butler) as a lens for survivalism. Her work appears in journals such as Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, SSM - Mental Health, and International Journal of Middle East Studies, as well as in public-facing platforms like Untold Magazine and Global Voices.

• Editor, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
• Editor, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
• Founding Member, Ethnography and Knowledge in the Arab Region (Arab Council for the Social Sciences)

Moghnie actively contributes to academic and public discourse through editorial work, conference participation, and media interviews. She has no listed scientific awards but maintains a strong record of scholarly and public engagement. She advises no formal students in the provided texts and is not involved in lab-based research, but her work is deeply collaborative and interdisciplinary.