Lys Alcayna-Stevens

Lys Alcayna-Stevens is a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven's Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and a Research Fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2017). Her research focuses on medical anthropology, political ecology, and science and technology studies, with an emphasis on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Key research areas include the social impacts of Ebola epidemics, environmental justice movements, and the interplay between conservation initiatives and economic inequality. She has held fellowships at the Institut Pasteur (Paris), Harvard University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Current projects include the 'POSTGROWTH' initiative on environmental justice in rural DRC and collaborations on 'postgrowth anthropology' with ICTA-UAB.

Teaching and academic activities include co-organizing reading groups on decolonial approaches and feminist methodologies. Her work addresses racial capitalism, health systems resilience, and the ethics of scientific fieldwork. Awards include the Marie-Skłodowska Curie Fellowship and the Fyssen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.