Sarah Willen

Sarah Willen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at UConn’s Human Rights Institute. Her work sits at the intersection of medical anthropology, migration studies, and human-rights scholarship, with a focus on how precarious legal status shapes health and access to care.

Education

• 2006 PhD in Anthropology, Emory University
• 2006 MPH (Global Health), Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
• 2008–2009 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
• 2006–2008 NIMH Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
• 1996 BA (English & Religion, summa cum laude), Case Western Reserve University; minors in Anthropology and Women’s Studies

Research Interests

Willen’s scholarship interrogates three interlocking domains:

1. The impact of unauthorized or irregular migration status on access to the social determinants of health.
2. Pedagogical strategies for training U.S. health professionals in cultural competence and human-rights perspectives.
3. The politics and ethics of “right to health” claims and discourses in the United States.

She is now launching a collaborative, multidisciplinary study examining how prolonged care by unregulated “pirate babysitters” in south Tel Aviv affects the health and development of children born in Israel to parents with precarious migration status.

Recent Scholarly Trajectory

Between 2020 and 2025 her publications have clustered around three themes: the lived experience of COVID-19 across diverse U.S. populations (with a large-scale Pandemic Journaling Project generating multiple papers); critical interrogation of “flourishing” as a policy and measurement concept; and ongoing analyses of migrant deservingness, health equity, and structural racism in Israel and the United States.

Awards & Fellowships

• NIMH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• Harvard Medical School Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Leadership & Grants

Willen currently directs the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at UConn’s Human Rights Institute, a role that encompasses grant writing, interdisciplinary team leadership, and mentoring of graduate researchers. Her new Tel Aviv study is supported by collaborative, multi-institutional funding.

Laboratory & Research Teams

She leads an active research collective housed jointly in the Department of Anthropology and the Human Rights Institute, where graduate research assistants participate in data collection, coding, and dissemination for the Pandemic Journaling Project and the forthcoming Israel-based child-care study.