Sarah S. Willen

Sarah S. Willen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the university's Human Rights Institute. A former NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she holds a PhD in Anthropology and an MPH in Global Health, both from Emory University. Her work bridges medical anthropology, migration studies, and human rights frameworks to address critical questions of health equity and social justice.

Her educational background includes:

• PhD in Anthropology from Emory University
• MPH in Global Health from Emory University

Willen's research spans multiple critical areas at the intersection of health, migration, and human rights. Her work examines how undocumented migrants navigate healthcare systems, how health equity is conceptualized across different communities, and the lived experiences of people during global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. She approaches these topics through a critical medical anthropology lens that emphasizes embodiment, structural violence, and the social production of health disparities. Her scholarship consistently centers on questions of dignity, deservingness, and the right to health in contexts of social and political marginalization.

Her publication record reveals a trajectory from early work on migration and health in Israel to increasingly interdisciplinary projects engaging with pandemic experiences, health equity frameworks, and the concept of flourishing. Her recent scholarship, particularly through the Pandemic Journaling Project and ARCHES study, demonstrates a methodological innovation combining digital humanities approaches with traditional anthropological methods to capture lived experiences during global crises.

Her major awards include:

• Stirling Prize for Best Published Book in Psychological Anthropology (2020)
• Edie Turner First-Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing (2020)
• Yonathan Shapiro Prize for Best Book in Israel Studies (2019)
• Two-time recipient of the Rudolf Virchow Prize (2004, 2012)

Willen has received significant research support from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has advised numerous graduate students and mentored early-career scholars through her leadership roles in professional organizations. She serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals including Social Science & Medicine, Culture Medicine & Psychiatry, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

She leads two major research initiatives: the Pandemic Journaling Project, which collects first-person accounts of pandemic experiences, and ARCHES (the AmeRicans' Conceptions of Health Equity Study), which investigates how Americans conceptualize health equity. She is also a network partner in the WAIT project examining temporalities of irregular migration.